


Once Upon an Everlasting Dream

by Terisrog



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bear Island, Cookies, Could this be magic?, Courtship With Books, F/M, Happy Ending, Longing, Love Scenes, Lyanna (mentioned), Maege (mentioned), Missandei (mentioned) - Freeform, Multiple Hot Drinks, Professor!Jorah, Reading, Real Life Fairytale, Sledge Ride, Snow, The Voice, Winter, Writer!Daenerys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:27:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27933835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terisrog/pseuds/Terisrog
Summary: Daenerys is heading to Bear Island to find inspiration: these holidays are her last chance to write her collection of fairytales. She's greeted there by Jorah Mormont, her own Knight of Winter who shares her love for stories. Daenerys and Jorah soon find themselves in the middle of a walking dream through the enchanted woods of the island. But can there be such a thing as "happily ever after" in real life?Rated for chapters 3-4.
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 75
Kudos: 52
Collections: Winter Jorleesi 2020





	1. An Offering to Summer (December 7)

**Author's Note:**

> We will follow Daenerys and Jorah live from the day they meet today (December 7!) to the end of this tale on December 25.
> 
> Each chapter is an offering to one of the four seasons; it is Jorah and Daenerys' belief that five days full of love can be worth three months. 💖 And that every season may be found in Winter: the new hopes and fleetingness of Spring, the sunny passion and storms of Summer, the cosiness and greyness of Fall, and of course the magic and coldness of Winter itself.
> 
> As an ex-professor of Literature and a fiction writer, Jorah and Daenerys share a deep love of literature and poetry in this story. I'll list the authors they will play with at the beginning of each chapter, and the complete references at the end. 
> 
> Many thanks to [@clarasimone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarasimone/pseuds/clarasimone/works) for reading the first version and giving me precious advice to improve it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Jorah and Daenerys will think of: John Donne, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, C.S. Lewis, Walt Whitman, Anaïs Nin, Milan Kundera, Charlotte Brontë and the legend of Merlin.

Once upon a time, when they who dream no longer did, there was an island.

He hadn’t always felt so. Once, upon another time, he would have opened his lectures with the very reverse. “No man is an island entire of itself,” he declaimed then. And he used to pause dramatically, gazing far out at the sea of his students; he would catch all their eyes in one sweep of a stare. And then he would smile, floatingly, and he would sail on: “every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” His voice would follow the roll of the waves; the words would crash on his teeth. His students he would carry and wreck down into foam, and surge them up again, along with his voice—rising from deep down his chest, down to the root of the stars—and, at the close, his voice would ring ominously in the amphitheatre: “it tolls for thee.”

And yet here he stood.

A man, and an island.

No longer was he involved in mankind; no more—no. He had been diminished by lies of love and loss of light. He had locked himself out of his life and had been left behind by time. If there had been someone to listen, he would have glowered that his cliff had been eroded, that his shores were abandoned; and that his mind was polluted by the cluster of modernity.

But there was no sun, and no one to hear.

He was an island living in an island, an island far lost in a sea of grey in an island lost far in a sea of sighs; and no one would ever shine upon them; not ever again.

Nevermore.

Little did the island know—though he really should have, should he not, dear heart?—the Sun was rising, a Ribbon at a time.

*

The Sun which Jorah was most definitely not waiting on was called Daenerys, and certainly the drizzle failed at dampening her spirits. She was beaming, and the grey surrounding her turned to silver. If the drizzle was offended to be sublimed, it wasn’t making it known.

Daenerys was feeling very proud of herself. She had trembled with nerves when she had boarded the ferry with her luggage, but now she was sailing across the Bay of Ice and already this felt more like an adventure than the three hours and a half she had spent on the plane from King’s Landing to Deepwood Motte. She would have preferred to make the journey by train and enjoy the sceneries change slowly as she’d chug along—for ten whole hours!—but her agent had been adamant. She knew Daenerys too well. Apparently, she was afraid her charge would stay indefinitely on the train to tour Westeros. Well! That was… That wasn’t entirely an inaccurate concern. These holidays were her last chance for her to get a grip on herself and her writing, and if she failed with this collection of fairy tales, her career was finished. Or frozen, at the very least. If she couldn’t get this project done, she knew it would get harder to write her next book—any next book.

The pilot, on board of the ferry, a woman who had a kind of She-bear, chestnut aura, with warm and green clothes, said in the speakers that Bear Island was visible. Daenerys knew: she had been trying so hard so see if that faint line ahead would solidify, shivering at the aft of the boat. She had not planned on the crossing being so cold. The wind bit at her, oozing ice through her sweater, and she wished the stitches had been knitted tighter. She was trying to huddle in her coat, but something of the wind and the sea just made it so very cold. She refused to abandon her post to go inside, though: nothing could have taken her away from the contemplation of the island, making itself more and more visible as she came closer to it. She could almost touch it, and its shores called to her; the cliff were forbidding and awe-inspiring, and there was something so romantic about it all. She was so glad Naath Literary Agency had been on a budget; Bear Island was perhaps the cheapest destination they’d been able to find, but she had a feeling it would welcome her, like a foster home. She was already feeling more like herself than she had been in years.

Daenerys was vibrating with excitement and chills when the ferry docked. She was the only one on-board and was struggling to unload her luggage when a girl ran up to help her down, much to Daenerys’ relief. “Are you Daenerys Targaryen?” the girl asked. She was clothed in something brown with a furry hood, and felt petite with a do-not-cross temper. “I’m Lyanna Mormont, Maege’s daughter. You rented our house!” the girl exclaimed. Daenerys thanked her, looking around at the severe, frosty shore and the huge pines she could see up ahead. “In truth I’m not really supposed to be here, I was only curious to meet you. Our designated sufferer for the season will take care of you,” Lyanna went on, something of a snigger in her tone. _Designated sufferer?_ Daenerys wondered silently, intrigued by such a turn of phrase. Had _she_ been designated to suffer with her string of failed loves and that tourniquet around her writing? “That’s him there,” pointed Lyanna. “He’ll get you geared up.”

 _Him there_ was in a tent some paces away, behind a counter. There was a banner with HELPFUL KNIGHT printed out in letters so big she could read them from the pier. Daenerys eyed the girl—there was some sort of private joke going on here she couldn’t quite get at, but she could sense she was an outsider in it. She just wasn’t sure if the joke was on her or the so called sufferer. “We designate a Knight of Winter every season,” Lyanna explained. “We don’t get many tourists and it’s just easier that way.”

Daenerys breathed in; the air was so pure, so good. It trickled down her lungs and settled in her stomach. It almost had a taste; not a foul taste, but a taste of pine and fresh and promises. She didn’t know it could be so fulfilling to breathe. She thanked Lyanna again, who ran away, and trudged on the path to the tent, until she stepped up to the Knight. He had something of gold and strength about him.

Daenerys had stopped looking at the world long ago; she would have been hard pressed to see the point. It was dull, its people tedious. The worlds of her books were much more vibrant to look at. And yet—more and more, it seemed to her that when she had gambled the world away, so too had she tossed herself out. How very hard it was for her now, to be sure of herself! What would a small Daenerys think, looking at her now, struggling to reconnect with the faith she could achieve anything?

But who had ever looked back? Not her dismal exes, certainly not her brother; nor did her father. Her mother could see her, possibly, from the ether. No—looking only meant more toil to paint her world on top of the canvas; she didn’t want to be limited. They wanted to paint by numbers? She made every effort not to see the tiny grey lines they meant to guide her by; let them try to stop her if she erased the bars from their prison!

But she had not trained her ears to aloofness. And so, when she heard him speak, and say “A small gift for our new visitor… Songs and histories from our island,” her stare came to a stop on his hands, holding books for her—books!—, and travelled up his arms, to the whisper of blue visible on his neck, to his chin and then, his face, and his eyes.

And into his eyes she fell.

This Knight was worth more than a glancing description—he was worth a dream, surely.

“I am the Knight of Winter,” he declared; and his long coat flapped in the wind, and his curls danced, loops of wind themselves, “Jorah Mormont, at your service.”

Of Winter? He was all seasons. His hair was fall; their curls a honey-gold, with depths of coppery ginger, and the softness of a shelter away from pounding rain. His tall frame, his cheekbones, cutting and imposing, were winter; daunting to outlanders, protective to darlings; and noble to all. His quiet strength, his beard were the bloom of spring, vigorous and singing vibrantly from morn to dusk. And his beauty, his deep voice, these were summer, surely, summer warm and hot and sun. And—he was still looking at her, expectant, unrushed but some trace of a concern in the set of his brow. It made her feel… safe.

“My name is Daenerys Targaryen,” she answered belatedly, chiding herself for being too formal and raking her mind for ways to make conversation.

“Khaleesi?” he asked, peering into her eyes.

“Yes,” she answered, wondering how familiar with her work he was, if he knew both her name and the pen name she had started with.

“I love your books. I love…” his eyes cut away. “Maybe you’re fed up with all this.”

“No, tell me,” she breathed. What did this man love?

“You told me to do nothing before and I listened to you. I’m not doing nothing again,” he quoted, in a quiet vehemence that rocked her roots.

“Why?” she asked, though in her heart she asked: how can you quote this from memory? How? Who are you?

He smiled such sadness she wondered if his tears carried trills of laugh.

“It’s good advice to live by,” he said, though she doubted that was more than a lid on a cauldron of reasons. And his eyes drifted away, like a ribbon of mist on a deserted field. “Why have you come to Bear Island for your holidays?” He asked, cocking his head at her, his eyes following her though his neck wanted to point him away.

“I’m writing fairy tales, with a modern twist, and I—I just… I needed to do some research. And I… I needed a vacation.” This wasn’t going well at all—she was saying too much and he would see she was in a burned-out mess before she even had the chance to tell him she was nice. She wasn’t _nice_ but she wanted him to think she was—and yet she didn’t, she wanted him to like her for what she was. What on Earth was happening to her on this island? It felt like waking up to herself.

“What sort of research?” he asked, looking genuinely curious.

“Salmon fishing,” she said sheepishly, and his neutral expression fell, replaced by unmistakable dismay. Great—now he thought she was a city-dweller with delusions on life in the wild.

“Salmon fishing is a Summer activity,” he explained to her sadly. “You won’t find anyone fishing for salmon now… perhaps in February you could in some touristy places. But on Bear Island we only begin the season in June.” He raked his hair with his hand, before asking her urgently: “You did not come all this way only for fishing, did you? I… I can show you the—I… Or perhaps we could get you back to the mainland… Did someone lead you on?”

Daenerys burst out laughing, at herself, and at his expression, getting more and more dejected by the minute. “Oh gods, don’t worry—it was Missandei—she’s my agent. I’m looking for more general inspiration anyway.”

“Well,” said Jorah, still darting sorrowful glances her way, “I hope you’ll find a golden inspiration.”

She stared at him.

He averted his eyes.

“Did you bring other clothes, or is that the warmest you’ve got?” he said, tracking her from the corner of his eyes, his head slightly turned away from her.

Of course Daenerys thought she had taken adequate clothes, but Jorah informed her that there was cold, and then there was _cold_. He somehow made the first _c_ sound like a warm cuddle in front of a fireplace with a steaming mug of tea, tugged lovingly in an oversize eiderdown, and the second _c_ like tiny needles of ice piercing her skin. He gave her overalls, indigo blue, apologizing that it was the easiest thing to keep warm and dry in if not the most flattering, gloves, telling her that in King’s Landing it was never cold, snowshoes, that in Dragonstone it was cold, a winter hat, and heat packs for her shoes, because in Bear Island it was _cold_.

“Your house is a fifteen-minute walk through the trees, following the path,” said Jorah. Then he paused to watch Daenerys’ pitiful look with her slightly shivering form, her luggage—two huge suitcases that surely carried half her house—and the pile of winter garb she now had. “I’ll walk you,” he said, and she broke into a smile so bright, it was as if she channelled all the beams of sunshine into his heart.

He piled her luggage into a sturdy sledge and secured it with straps. She passed him the overalls and he looked at her, and drawled, “Much obliged,” and her heart stopped. Could one have a crush on two words only? And the promise she saw in them?

She had no need for snowshoes for the snow was well compacted, and her shoes had some sort of studs that probably wouldn’t have met Jorah’s approval but kept her from making a fool of herself. She gazed in awe at the trees. She felt small here. Rows and rows of trees, like an elite army, unsullied by human emotions. And yet, there was something about them… A humanity, an individuality brimming deeper than her gaze could go. _I will get to know you all_ , she silently promised them. Surely, on foot, she would never be able to grasp the sheer bigness of the place. It was timeless. Silent.

She felt, suddenly, free. On holidays. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt on holidays, with weeks of adventures ahead and exploring, and—a time that would never end.

Maybe she really _could_ write here.

“Are you always a Winter Knight or do you have another job?” she asked. “I mean,” she stammered, “Not that being a Knight isn’t a noble activity.”

“I’m a Professor of literature. I was. I’m not anymore.”

“Don’t you miss it?” she asked.

“I…” He did it again, this darting of his eyes.

This man had _secrets_. Sombre secrets. And she was NOT supposed to turn him into a character. Not. Not not not. Life was not a fairy tale, she repeated to herself in Missandei’s voice. It didn’t work. So she repeated it to herself in Tyrion’s voice. It didn’t work. Then she repeated it to herself in her brother’s voice and—her heart recoiled, slapped, as if a hand had crushed the flame away.

But flames were hard to douse, on Bear Island.

For upon the path, there was a lamppost. And though it wasn’t lit yet—“Winter from Narnia!” she exclaimed.

“I…” started Jorah, but then he stopped. If he looked, through her eyes—so it was. “Yes,” he agreed slowly.

And after a beat, he added, “You do bring beauty into the world—not just in your books.”

And indeed it looked to Jorah that Daenerys saw Winter for the very first time and through her eyes, so could he; he could see snow again. He could see that each flake was individual; he could see the towering of the pines and the whiteness of snow and the blue of sky.

The house Daenerys had rented was a very small one, out of a fairy tale. A cabin really, all in wood, with a fireplace and armchairs. The bed was through a ladder upstairs. There was a small kitchen with antique cutlery and pots that made her feel like she would cook amazing feasts, and Jorah showed her where everything was. There was a library on a wall with books, and rugs, cushions, soft covers she could snuggle in.

“I could make you spiced hot apple cider to help you settle in,” he proposed.

“Ohh, if you do, I’ll be your slave for ever!” exclaimed Daenerys.

“I’d rather you were my Queen,” Jorah managed to utter through his frozen mind. Then it occurred to him this had probably been much too flirty; he shouldn’t have answered her at all. It must have been an expression she said to every person who met her path and meant to do her a kindness. But she laughed, a vowely laugh from down her throat that crinkled her eyes, dimpled her cheeks, showed her teeth—“You do that, o Knight of Winter,” she said. “Come, you pledged yourself to me, bring forth my hot cider.” And she smiled, a smile that did not dim as he watched her with seen, soft, eyes, but twinkled at him instead.

*

There he was, moving in her kitchen like a dancer, his steps refined to a rhythm that seemed artistic. The ginger of his hair, in the light, was beautiful.

Night was falling quick and it seemed so cold outside; the windows were fogging and it seemed to Daenerys she was in a nest, a safe haven on Earth, a bubble of happiness where nothing could touch her.

He was still speaking, his voice a coat of warm against the cold of the night, of Bear Island, and she asked him questions after questions—both of them safe behind her research. This was all for a fairy tale, if he was speaking of the old woodcarver, and the night when they had to save that tourist who had thought he could drive without snow tyres and chains, and the carpets that had to be carried out just before the first snow, to clean them in softness.

And she, she lit his words, her laughter shining new light on them he hadn’t seen, and he wanted to keep speaking so she’d be always as happy with Bear Island.

“You fascinate me,” she breathed, her eyes drunk from the pints of cider she had downed. And yet they were so sharp, they looked right at his core.

And Jorah’s temples pounded with a connection that had knitted itself so quickly, so quickly—what was happening to him? Was she casting a spell? But he didn’t want her power over him to end, never. He was lost in the thought of her neck. How would it feel to graze it… under her hair? And move up, to caress the hair at the base of her skull? To kiss it? But no—no he couldn’t. He should just enjoy her company. And her hands burning through the wool when she put them on his forearm, quick as a butterfly’s wing turning his head on its axis.

He had to distract himself. “Is it your first time, living on an island?”

She leaned towards him, her eyes sparkling. She seemed to be doing that a lot and, one day, these sparks would catch his heart and set it aflame.

“Don’t we all live on an island?” she asked, her question rolled in affectionate cheek and he could just—look at her, and try not to show all that he felt. “A continent is a very big island, in a way,” she explained further, more seriously. And warming up to her subject, she added: “And more to the point, Earth is an island, in the sea of the infinite universe, is it not? Which would make islanders out of us all.” He followed the expressive arcs of her eyebrows, tracing her words like his hands traced his.

“An island, such as yours, is longing better contained. It becomes nostalgic rather than sad. We can contemplate infinity in a safe place. Have a taste of it, before we have to join it. Don’t you think so?” she asked of him, and she smiled at him, too sweetly, too warmly, he would mistake it for what it was not. And listening to her, finding there was a link between them already there, when he didn’t know her—he wanted to tell her the words longing to be let free, to run to her so he would say what he felt. “Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, you must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking—it comes to me, as of a dream—I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you”. Words fell upon themselves, trying to escape, and he, holding to them—no! he couldn’t!—and them, twirling and mixing until he no longer knew what he wanted to say, what he could say. And so, finally, all that escaped his lips was: “Yes.”

A yes said in a voice that was meant to convey all the Whitman poems he couldn’t say to her, and in his heart this _yes_ , this simple heartfelt _yes_ , meant the last stanza, _I am to see to it that I do not lose you_ , the one he was not free to say to her. She had been in his life for the whole of five hours, and he found himself surrounded in her; he opened his eyes and he could see she was already there, in all his life, and that in every single thing he had loved, she had been there, for she had loved them too.

She spoke of her books and he spoke of her characters, and she spoke of her city, and the magic one could find in it in hidden nooks, and he spoke of Bear Island, and they spoke of taking the Seven Arts and living each to the brim, they spoke of food and of the memories they thought would make good stories. And they were so happy. The tiny house’s walls crackled with cold and night and, the more they felt, distantly, just how frozen Bear Island was, the more the kitchen seemed enchanted, and bright, and warm, and safe. The more the kitchen felt like home.

“Why did you take ‘Khaleesi’ as a pseudonym?” he asked.

“When I was tiny, I spoke another language. Can you imagine that, Jorah? When I think of my mother, I speak to her in High Valyrian and… I can’t speak to her. And there’s my father’s voice, urging me on, to take back his place when Kingslayer ousted him of the bestseller list.”

He looked into her eyes, unwavering and dry.

“But I don’t… I wanted my voice. A name that wasn’t in my mother’s tongue or my father’s legacy. And I took the nickname but it fell short of what I hoped it would be for me. A name that would… raise me up,” she said proudly, her head held high, her cheeks pink with exposing herself. She couldn’t believe she’d say all of this to a stranger. How alive, how very much the Daenerys she was proud of she felt!

At last the wind fell outside and Jorah woke up from his trance, the howling jolting him out of this afternoon—this evening—he had disappeared in. “Maybe you could show me around the forest tomorrow, until I get my bearings?” Daenerys asked, her heart beating wildly. He nodded, and said, “Good night…” and upon realizing he didn’t know if he could call her Daenerys or should stick to Ms. Targaryen, he almost smiled and said, very softly, half in jest and half in deep respect: “… Khaleesi.” “Good night, Jorah,” she answered, her smile stretching on his name. He nodded in what was almost a bow, and left in the night, closing the door very delicately after one last soft glance. Daenerys twirled around. She danced in the arms of happiness on the small cabin in the woods. She closed her eyes and dreamed.

The cold crackled outside; she didn’t care. At her core was a sun that could never be frozen.

*

Jorah stayed staring at the door, though he wasn’t seeing it. He breathed in; a smile, not the cold air, and he turned, looking at the million stars of Bear Island, like it was the first time he could see how very beautiful his home was.

It was night, already—it was night so very soon in winter, and yet he could see very clearly, without need for a light, because the white snow illuminated the paths. His hands shook as he tied his snowshoes. He could do it in his sleep, he could do it looking elsewhere, but today—he trembled. There was only her. He didn’t want to tie snowshoes, he wanted to drop in the snow and make an angel; he wanted to dance, yes dance; he wanted to shine to call her to him, to shine as bright and true as a lighthouse.

It occurred to him that if she looked out, she would see him still at her door, and that it might frighten her. Though he hoped maybe—maybe—was there a chance? Was there a tiny chance at all?—her heart would squeeze and beat and draw him in. But no, he couldn’t chance her thinking he was a creeper. And, besides, she couldn’t see anything from the condensation on the windows, except if she swiped her hand on the glass and—he had to go.

His legs hurt when he got up; he had stayed kneeling too long. He walked the path and, when he was sure his silhouette would be indistinguishable from Daenerys’ renting house, he took off his woolly hat, and squeezed it and pressed it to his chest, his smile bright as a beacon, and he wanted to erupt, to sing, to leap, he wanted, he wanted her smile.

But as soon as he closed the door of his house and looked around him, at the lonely room, he felt so very alone. He turned on the light, but it wasn’t the yellow fire he had hoped it would be. What was he doing? How could he have a crush after seeing someone for so few a time? How could he…

The cold outside pressed on him, chilling his bones.

He couldn’t have a crush on her. She was too young. She wasn’t too young, she was—luminescent. But he was too old for her. Too old to want to take a chance. That wasn’t age perving him up, was it? He had never felt that way for his students, he hadn’t, he couldn’t… Was it the beginning of?… But he had never felt that way. Drunk on his feet. We stand too many years apart, he thought, it’s not possible. But her soul… surely his soul could love her soul? He could love her from afar, couldn’t he? Even if… Oh gods but he wanted her. And crush all the years between them.

 _There is a perfection in everything that cannot be owned_ , he reminded himself severely. Yes. One should always heed Anaïs Nin. He imagined her perfect, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. And yet…

And yet, she had freckles on her left cheek; three in a line, leading his eyes from her mouth to her ear: a line of kisses to give. The last of the tiny stars was right there; at the heart of her blush. They were faded behind her concealer but he had seen them—them and each one scattered by the loving hand of the universe in the map of her cheeks.

And yet—she had fire in her eyes, she had a smile of joy, her hair was ribbons taken from the sun, she had magic in her mind! And yet: she could see him, see right through him, see his thoughts, guess his fears, draw him out… she could.

And yet; though he knew she could crush him, he wasn’t afraid under her eyes.

And yet! He wanted to give her the world; he wanted to know every footnote about her. He wanted to see her at the very top of the world. He wanted to create a salmon who would swim downstream, a salmon she could gaze at in the dead of winter; he wanted her the happiest of all, he wanted to hear the happiest of her laughs, he wanted to make that laugh swell and ring down, and wash him away, to shores of wonders.

How could you snare me with your smile and your words? How? I don’t know you! He rebelled. But still the image of her drowned him in joy, and the fact that she wasn’t there iced him to the heart, and he hurt and strained against himself. He no longer knew himself; he was a stranger in his mind. And yet… he was more himself than he had been, frozen in Bear Island, waiting for what? He felt as if his heart had grown and his mind had expanded and now in his mind lived a future Jorah, a Jorah who was as perfect and as himself as he could be—for her. He had to be the best he could be; for her. To protect her, cherish her, lather her in his love.

But he had felt so alone. He had craved someone—to understand him. To connect with a part of his soul that’d been dead. Extinct. She had awoken him. She had kissed his soul and he had… he had… He felt vertigo. He dared not want to fall; he dared not hope. Kundera’s words were haunting him; and now he knew what the _unbearable_ lightness of being felt like. _What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves._ And the truth was, he wanted to fall. Daenerys wasn’t an emptiness—she was the very opposite. He wanted to be lured, he wanted to be won—but the emptiness that he feared was that of her love. She couldn’t help being magical and passionate and strong—and he had to keep himself from falling into which she could not give back.

Daenerys. Daenerys. He did not yet have the right to say her name; but for a night, for a night only, couldn’t he dream it was his?

Yes—he was happy and affrighted and he was doomed.

*

Daenerys woke up really early—she didn’t usually, especially not on holidays, but; surely it was the excitement of it all. She ignored the voice making crowns of his name in each of her steps, and got ready as speedily as she could. She rushed to the pier, never thinking the Knight could not be there this early. She was hoping they would walk in the woods, and that they would talk as they had the day before. Had it been a dream? Would he meet her, unchanged and still her four seasons Knight trying to diminish himself as one?

He was there, and he showed her how to attach her snowshoes, and he checked she was well tugged into her winter gear. “We could also take a snowmobile, if you want to explore all the island—we won’t go far on foot,” he said hesitantly, and was moved when she exclaimed “No!”.

They first started on the track that led to her house, but turned very soon to another one, which after a short enchanted walk led to a completely empty land of white snow, beautiful and immense. Jorah told her it was the frozen lake. She all but leaped down the steep. The snow there was feeling entirely different under her snowshoes. Her feet touched a layer of crust of hard snow and then, she sank into a nest of softer snow. Just knowing there was water underneath… what if she fell? But she trusted him. He wouldn’t let her fall into a frozen lake. How exhilarating to brave danger with a Knight! It made her feel she could achieve anything.

When she timidly told him of her fear, he told her that if she ever fell through ice, she should stay very still till the shock left. “You are strong,” he assured her very seriously. “When your body sees it’s alright, you’ll feel better. Then you should pull your feet up, and kick them really fast. Spread your arms out and swim your way out, with your feet. Then get as far from the hole as you can, to solid ice, before it’s safe again to get up.” She looked at him—did he know the trick to survive in any situation? She would always be safe with that Knight by her side, she felt sure of it.

They stopped and he got out a thermos in a knitted sleeve with small bears, slightly askew. “I had to make one for my niece, Lyanna, and this is the first failed attempt,” he explained when she gushed about how cute they were. Who _was_ this man? The spice tea was delicious and warmed her all over.

“Come, we’ll stop longer somewhere else,” he said, and showed her a small path up the bank of the lake. He pointed to her the grey lichen that the reindeers liked to eat. “You mean they are reindeers here?” she asked. He nodded and told her she most probably would see some even if they did not organize sledge rides for tourists on Bear Island, because they were grazing in semi freedom. “And bears?” she asked. He laughed—“of course they are bears! Here in these woods!” And she did not quite know if he was jesting or not.

He pointed to her: “Do you see the oaks, here? This is the bluebell wood. In May, they are bluebells everywhere under these trees, right down to the lake.”

“Oh, it is the faeries’ territory!” Daenerys exclaimed, then bit her lip. She should keep herself in check and not henpeck him with fancy bursts of nonsense. But he didn’t seem annoyed; he smiled at her, mostly with the twinkle in his eyes, and said: “Yes, they’ll capture any children wandering here.”

“Never to be seen again!” approved Daenerys, a smile spilling from her lips again. “Can we go in?” She dared to ask. She often felt, with new acquaintances, as if she was trading on thin ice, and that the ice would crack as soon as she let herself be seen; and shatter when too many of her dreams would weigh upon the surface of reality. But with him—it felt as if she was on solid ground, and that she could leap and jump and dance and he would never, ever, crack under the truth of her.

“There is no trace in the snow,” Jorah said, “but it certainly doesn’t mean the faeries aren’t here. We have to be careful,” and he was so serious in their make-believe game it made her want to burst in glee.

“Please, Jorah!” she cajoled him.

He bowed to her. “As you wish, my Lady.” And so into the Bluebell Wood they stepped, and Daenerys weaved stories for Jorah, fluttering around the place, so happy and transfixed he thought he could see the bluebells purple dresses instead of the snow.

“My Lady, will you dance with the Knight of Winter?” he asked, bowing at the waist, and looking up at her with eyes that had to be worth a whirl of waltzing bluebells.

She took his hand; even in her ill-fitted gloves, much too large for her, his surrounded hers.

“Dance so Winter never ends, my Liege?” she asked demurely, curtsying to him. “You mean to trick me so you can take my bluebells away?”

“There is no sibling rivalry,” Jorah rumbled, enticing her closer to him. “At the turn of the year, I will shed my Winter crown for a crown of Spring—there is only me. You will not find a Knight of Spring on these lands.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Only you.” And in her eyes, such felt he. Though it was dangerous. Though she was acting, acting at being a faerie queen, in the Knight of Winter’s arms, twirling away as snowflakes twirled away. A dangerous game; how long could he delude himself she dreamed the same dream he did?

He took her other hand, resting them both upon his heart, wishing he could conjure their snowshoes away, or that they could float above the snow; wishing they could step so lightly upon faerie ground that they wouldn’t crush one wink of the sun, wooing its way round every fallen snowflake. They looked at each other, breathing as one, dreaming as one too, not wanting to be the one to break the spell and let their tableau fade away.

In their mind, in their game, they danced between the oaks, stepping lightly over the ghosts of bluebells, careful not to make their rings chime and call the wood faeries to them. They danced to conjure a dream, that his arms were real and her arms were too, and they danced so the other could see the carpet of zesty green and peppered purple, and hear the music the stars played, and feel an embrace that would never melt away.

The snow started falling, a sea of couples to dance in the pastoral ball they dreamed but couldn’t partake in, and Daenerys beamed. “You lied to me, my Lord,” she told him, her eyelashes peppered with snowflakes, her cheeks red under the kiss of cold. And he wanted to kiss her, kiss her, kiss her.

“There are times when I look at you and still can’t believe you’re real,” he said, and on the lull of his words he panicked, and stopped their dreamed-up steps. He had to mask what he had wanted to say—it was too plain, the unsaid in his words, and yet; was it wrong of him to want to say it? Could one say _I love you_ after so few moments? And so he stepped into words already known, words he knew—he hoped—she would know. And he smiled, to make her believe he was jesting, though it tore his heart, and he knew his eyes were not smiling enough, too shiny, too intense. “You—you strange, you almost unearthly thing!”

She beamed at him, like _he_ was unearthly, like he was a promise come true, and she hugged herself, exclaiming “Jane Eyre! Yes!!” and his heart constricted and leaped to her, and she was looking at him with such hopeful eyes, as if she hoped for him to say the next words, the next words on Rochester’s lips, to say “I love” but he couldn’t, he didn’t, he—

“What, me?” she said playfully, her huge eyes looking up at him, begging him to play pretend with her, to say in play all they couldn’t say in earnest. “Me who have not a friend in the world but you,” she carried on, batting her eyelashes at him, trying to suppress her smile and yet failing because her eyebrows laughed for her, her cheeks dimpled on her joy. And his heart! His traitorous heart, wanting to believe her! “If you are my friend,” she quoted on; oh that she could know Brontë at the drop of the hat! And he nodded, trying to let her see how very much he meant it, trying not to sound too intense. “Not a shilling but what you have given me?”

And she looked at him then, she looked at him with her violet eyes, entreating him, and he wanted to play, he wanted to let go and play with her in eternal play. And he quoted the words too close to words he didn’t want to say.

“You, Jane, I must have you for my own—entirely my own,” he said, his heart kissing his lips. He dared to look at her, his chest pounding wildly behind the safe cloak of the words. “Will you be mine? Say yes, quickly.” He let the _quickly_ die with his failing breath, hoping she would attribute the flickering of his voice to his commitment to the game.

“Let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight.” Oh, she had left the _Mr. Rochester_ out—had she done it on purpose? His lips asked the question Rochester had asked, and the question he, Jorah, wanted to ask: “Why?”

“Because I want to read your countenance—turn!” Daenerys answered, stomping her foot and frowning at her snowshoes when they made her task difficult; she really was as spirited as the heroin she was playing.

“There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, scratched page,” and it was much too true, he was such a page she should just throw away. “Read on: only make haste, for I suffer,” and he did, the endless feud between make-believe and reality so painful when he wanted them, for once, to merge and become one.

She studied his face; his face peppered with the snowflakes slowly falling, the sound as they hit the ground a swallowing of sound, as if they ate noise on their fall. Oh the reflection the lick of melting snowflakes made on his hair, how sparkly it made his golden-ginger hair! Some of his curls bend a little under the flakes clenching at them, and his beard—she wanted to kiss each snowflake there, each one individually, even if she had to use the very tip of her tongue to catch them one by one.

“Come, we’ll go warm ourselves by the fire,” he said, his voice rough. “What fire?” she asked, looking round her, half-expecting him to conjure a fire out of thin air and a magic stick.

“All throughout the forest they are small cabins anyone can use, with chopped firewood stocked inside and a bunk. That way one can always find shelter,” Jorah explained. She couldn’t believe how hospitable Bear Island was, behind its foreboding appearance.

Jorah built the fire outside of the nearest cabin, a very short walk away. There was a metal tripod to fix kettles and pots above it. And the cabin came with a stainless kettle! Daenerys rummaged through the cabin while the fire took—she was sure one of these had a treasure or a secret about it. When she came back out, Jorah had made a small feast: hot chocolate, from boiled water and two packets of powder mix, and he had taken out a small bag of almonds which he was shelling with a pocket knife.

She sat down on a log as close to him as she could. The crackling, spluttering of the fire was alluring; she was toasting herself, enjoying the sharp contrast with the bitter cold at her back. The smoke was stinging her eyes and making them water, but she couldn’t have been happier.

“I have actual chocolate too,” Jorah said. “Do you want some?” She nodded happily, but exclaimed before he could put his piece in his mouth.

“No! don’t eat it now!” pleaded Daenerys. “Drink first.” He obeyed, and the warmth from her stare, surveying him, infused him more than the hot chocolate did.

“Now, take it! Quickly!” And, puzzled, he put the chocolate in his mouth.

“Do you see, your mouth is warm… it melts more easily.” Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him close his eyes, lounging by the fire, and enjoying the chocolate caressing his tongue in a melting bitter-and-sweet kiss, so offered and relaxed.

Before she could stop herself, she leaned in and gave the gruff of his cheek a peck.

“What was that for?” he asked softly, opening his eyes, his hand upon the kiss she had left on his cheek. It felt like a gift. It felt more than her lips on him for a second spent too quick. It felt like she had gifted him her lips, and he had gifted her his cheek, and that on that connection they shared something more substantial. Trust. Hope. A token of more.

“For making me so happy,” she answered, her eyes shining.

*

And yet, the days propelled Daenerys from elation to despair, swinging her mood around on a flick of circumstances. She would feel so very happy, and so very sure that she was reconciled to herself; and then she would lose her footing to doubt. “This game is hurting me,” she realized. “We must stop—I must come clean, and tell him all my bluffs are truths.”

But she couldn’t—if he didn’t feel the same way, the dream would shatter and she would watch it melt, like a snowman in the light of day. She wanted her safe place of delusion, where she couldn’t take refuge because it wasn’t safe anymore. Reality was choking her. And yet she knew the very next moment she’d feel precious and elevated in Jorah’s eyes, in their discussions, in the energy of him sparkling at her, she would feel herself ecstatically climb to the very top of the world.

She could feel her heart shrivelling, creaking. It hurt when she breathed in cold. It hurt physically. She wanted him in earnest, she wanted him for her. She wanted to keep playing with him in their place of make believe; but with the assurance he saw their games as she did.

Her jaw clamped on itself, the bones of her head seemed to shrink. She was compressing into ice. “I am he that aches with amorous love,” she quoted to herself. “Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.” But Whitman did not soothe her this time; he understood her; he _was_ her; but he could no more solve her quandary than calm her fears.

“I can’t fall in love,” she thought. Would this be her last enchantment? She didn’t want to give him all her secrets for him to weave the spell that would lead to her eternal imprisonment, at his mercy and sucked out dry. And yet she wanted to tell him all of her secrets, even at the bottom pit of her despair, for loving him never felt like this; it felt… glorious. It felt like her. But she couldn’t think of love; love at first sight was a myth. She’d known him for one act; and she didn’t know if the play they lived in was a tragedy; she knew nothing of him.

Daenerys was not used to dream in reality—what was _happening_ to her? Why did she want to risk all her life on him—when she knew not if enough of her dream would sustain reality? Everything was interpretation: the reader made the story and the author was powerless to challenge them. Here in life, though, she could imagine him, as she wanted—but who knew how he thought of her, with his soft glances and hidden smile and his quiet strength? She did not want her interpretation doused in ice; she wanted it to be true: that he dreamed of her too, and shrouded in his play the same secluded truth she did.

The secret ensconced at the heart of their games was that they veiled naught. She had to hold on to this dream; she had to.

She just wished her dream was true enough to be a hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; (...) because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." John Donne (1572-1631), No Man is an Island  
> "Nevermore" Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), The Raven  
> "I’ll tell you how the Sun rose – A Ribbon at a time" Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), I’ll tell you how the Sun rose  
> "Winter from Narnia" C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Daenerys is referring to Lucy Pevensie stepping from a wardrobe to the wintery land of Narnia, in which there is a lamppost.  
> "Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you" Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass  
> "There is a perfection in everything that cannot be owned" Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), Delta of Venus  
> "What is vertigo? Fear of falling?" Milan Kundera (1929-1975), The Unbearable Lightness of Being  
> "You—you strange, you almost unearthly thing" Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), Jane Eyre  
> "last enchantment" Daenerys is thinking of Merlin's entrapment by Viviane. He loved her and taught her the spell that she would use to cage him.  
> "Does the earth gravitate?" Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass


	2. An Offering to Fall (December 13)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Daenerys and Jorah will quote from: Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Barrie and William Shakespeare. A complete list of nods to folklore, myths and other stories may be found in the end notes.

The days fell away behind him and Jorah refused to see surely this meant she would leave—not tomorrow, not even soon, but sooner than yesterday; the longer he had her with him, the sooner this dream would tear.

He was feeling humbled and elevated, happy and fearful. He contradicted himself constantly, swinging frenziedly between emotions he hadn’t known he could feel.

He lived in twisted agony between elevation and despair.

He had been so very lonely. So lonely. He had thought himself an island. But he wasn’t—he could joust with her! He could play with her, he could think and dream with her, and of her! He had been grey November when he could have burst through dimness; when he could have been a golden light.

He could always have been a golden light. Would he have found her sooner then?

He was elated. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t think of anything outside of her. Or rather, _everything_ made him think of her. She was in every single thing. She lighted the world. She made him giddy.

Daenerys.

He had never been giddy.

It reminded him of…

He had…

 _I’m falling in love_ , it dawned on him. _It exists. It’s… the feelings from stories really do exist_.

How could this happen to him? “Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me,” he quoted to himself, laughing at his pride and his cynicism. Oh yes he had thought so; just like Whitman, he had believed it with all his might.

Oh she did withdraw him from all but love; but she didn’t love him. She couldn’t. “It is enough for us that we are together—we never separate again,” if only it could be true! If only he could dispense of time, and dispense of the world, and he could run to her, his soul bared without earthly weight, to bow to her and beg her own: _let me love you, let me worship you! I need to love you. Please? I’ll bestow upon you all the marvels you make me see_. His soul would plead, and perhaps his beautiful lady without mercy would bless him.

But they weren’t only souls; and what cloaked his soul was passed Fall. She was Spring—and they could never meet in Summer.

*

Their walks in the forest could have been repetitive, if they hadn’t been themselves; but to them, with each day a different Bear Island came to life. The sun, or lack thereof, painted the trees, the sky, the snow, in a brand new palette. The wind made the snow fall from the branches upon them; it pushed a sprinkle of white on the trunks. Their feet would crunch on a crust of ice or pad softly in powder—they would see mysterious spoors to follow: it was always new.

That day, though, Jorah wasn’t paying attention to the forest; Daenerys was telling him of her life, and he would have puffed his chest out at the honour, had he not been horrified at her family and entourage.

“Your brother did what?” Jorah asked, his voice worrying at the cold biting at them.

“My first books—my trilogy—he wanted to send them under his name to agents. He wanted to become a big name in publishing, like my father… To escape him, I had moved in with my boyfriend at the time, Drogo, but it was a mistake. But I stopped him. I stopped them both. I did.” She frowned, looking at her past furiously.

“Of course you did, my… of course you did,” said Jorah intensely. Never in her life had Daenerys felt so looked at. She felt as if, for Jorah, the whole world faded in this instant, and he only saw her. He listened so intently, the air was vibrating in his effort; had he spoke he wouldn’t have been more active. She had never, she realised now, been listened to before. She hadn’t known what it meant, to listen to someone, to disappear in their world in this fashion. It made her feel of worth. She hoped she wouldn’t disappoint him, and her shoulders unrounded under his praise.

“I forgot myself,” said Daenerys, looking down. But she felt Jorah’s eyes on her, and she lifted her eyes. She could not feel ashamed cradled into such a glance. “I kept the manuscripts, and I daydreamed about them, but when I was with Drogo, I disappeared. I stopped writing. I lost myself. I…”

Jorah was not saying a word, and yet she felt his soul was plugged into hers.

“When I left him, I wrote all night. And all day. And all week. I patched the missing scenes, I fixed the plot holes… All of it, in fifteen days.” Jorah could well believe it. There was such a resolute energy in her, just recounting the scene, that he could see how she would move worlds and armies.

“I barely slept and yet, I felt such exhilaration, such joy—I felt myself again. I thought this was a state I could only feel through writing,” she added, looking at him, hoping he would hear her unspoken words: _until I met you_. “And I sent it to many agents, and Missandei, at Naath Literary Agency, do you know them?, answered me. And eventually we found a publisher, and Drogon, the first book of my Dragons series, was well received. Then Viserion entered the New York Times Best Seller list, and a year after that Rhaegal made it to the top one. I thought it was the happiest day of my life,” she smiled as if she were carried in triumph by all her fans, longing to touch her hand, celebrating her success.

“For the longest time, I felt I had chained them in a cave—my ideas, my hopes… my dreams—and yet they still carried me. When the time came, the books forgave me,” she said, looking fondly at the creaks between the worlds.

“And now, you’ve come to Bear Island to write about salmons?” Jorah prodded, so very gently Daenerys felt she might cry. Why couldn’t he have been there sooner? Before? Oh—what would she be now, if she had always been carried in such love? In such, in such, in such care. Empathy. If she had always been given the love she’d not dared to hope she deserved. The love she had stopped to hope could exist. If someone had been there to give her more than her dreams, to bundle every last piece of her in tenderness and passion—who would she be now?

“The truth is,” Daenerys admitted, and this she had never said even to herself, “I am in a writing slump.” And as she said the words, she could see them for what they were: just six words. Was this the monster she had spent years afraid of?

Would all of her bad, ugly truths seem so lovable in Jorah’s eyes? Oh she wanted to tell him everything; she wanted him to see her, all of her, she wanted him to know her better than she did herself.

“Tyrion, he’s my editor at the Seven Kingdoms, told Missandei about this fairy tales retelling project they had. And Missandei thought a retelling could be a great way for me to have some structure, but it didn’t work… and so here I am. It’s my last chance before Tyrion replaces me with Jon Snow. You know, the author of The King in the North. Heroic Fantasy?”

Jorah’s lips twisted in something that suspiciously looked like it might have been a grimace. Daenerys didn’t know if it meant Jorah had decided he hated Jon’s books on cover basis, or if he had read them and despised them, but… There was a knot there, a basis for misunderstanding, and in her previous relationships Daenerys would have, and had, given everything to avoid her partners finding about any knot. She would have hidden it, changed the subject… but she couldn’t bear hiding anything from Jorah. Anything. And so she admitted:

“Jon and I had a fling. Tyrion was not happy about it, the nerve of him! I gave him a severe dressing-down. In the end, we wrote The Long Night together, and…”

“It was a huge hit, was it not?” Jorah said, his sad glance telling her that he knew there was more to it.

“Yes, and with such bad reviews. We split up, not because of that, I don’t think. We just hid too many things. I didn’t even know Jon was an alias before it was made public. I hid things, too. I didn’t trust him to know me, I just wanted… I thought it would be safer to hide. But it brought me nothing. And I never want to hide again.” Looking at the fire in her eyes, Jorah could well believe so.

“They were my babies,” she added, sadly. “My books. They were me. A part of me born in the world. And Jon didn’t love them.”

“He didn’t deserve you,” Jorah growled. “None of them did.”

“Varys hates me, I think,” said Daenerys. “He’s the director of collection and he’s been undermining me for years. Missandei says he doesn’t and he’s just badly going about it for me to take up writing as I used to, but I can’t see that. Why would he manipulate me in this fashion if he wanted the best for me? And I’ve had enough. I will _roast_ him when I get back.”

The truth of it was, Daenerys wanted to dump all her hurts on Jorah and let him soothe them. She wanted to purr under his words, for him to assuage that acid that sometimes consumed her. She wanted him to turn all her fire to fuel; how could he know how to do that, in such few days?

And the most magical part was, with him there by her side, she felt she could take the sword and fight her own battles. She just needed a bit of strength—a bit of his strength—to take down the world.

“What is it you fear?” he asked gently. “What is stopping you?”

“Going mad,” she blurted out before she knew it was the truth. It was as if she had spitted out poison. “You know how they called my father the Mad King? He thought writing should come from despair. I’ve been taught to think only despair last forever, not joy. That tears only come from sadness. That the darkness wins, always. It is not true. But I’m afraid someday it will be,” she confessed, trying to keep control of her wobbling voice.

“Your father was ill, wasn’t he?” Jorah said so very gently. She nodded, hesitantly. “And he refused treatment?” She nodded again. “Then, even if you do have the same illness, you don’t have to fight it in the same way. You can get help. And you _don’t_ need despair to write. You mustn’t believe your inspiration is tied to hardship. It is not. Your inspiration is your light, deep down inside; you do not have to be tormented and dark to create worlds. It’s the other way around: your worlds help you to keep your light!”

He took her hands, pressing them, looking at her searchingly. “Why are you so afraid you’ll turn like him? You are so joyful, you are… And you are not spiteful of your peers like he was.”

She looked at his lips speak to her, she heard the words meant to slice down her fears.

“Shine, alright?” Jorah pleaded, seeking her eyes.

 _She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her_. D.H. Lawrence’s words had haunted her; but looking at Jorah, she could believe she was meant to fight against which had been denied to her. It was up to _her_ to be herself; to be the best version of herself. She had saved the embers of herself, the very core of her; but she hadn’t given herself the power to blaze them all. Shine, he had said. Yes—she had to believe in herself and what she could do, as she used to when she had had the courage to leave her brother, to leave Drogo, to _save_ her books.

Why had she lost her faith when they weren’t battles left to fight? She could see it now: her Knight had shown her the way. “Thank you,” she told him, her heart bursting, unfolding her smile and stretching her strength.

It was sore, her faith, but she would work on it. Until it was unshakable. Once more. As it had been, before she lost her way to writing.

“Jorah?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“We are friends, are we not? We are?”

His heart was choking in her words. “Of course we are, Dae—we are indeed,” Jorah looked away, annoyed at himself, his cheeks burning a bit from his stumble.

“You can presume to call me Daenerys, if we are friends,” said Daenerys so very gently, her hand reaching to his biceps, and pressing it.

“Daenerys,” he repeated, transfixed, staring at her name drawing itself in the cold air, in wreaths of his breath; if it could only graze her cheek, her lips; her heart! If it could dare what he did not.

That gaze! What did it mean? Did it mean what she hoped it did? Daenerys knew she was attractive. But was she attractive to _him_? She struggled mostly with being found too much; but under his eyes, she felt a shiver of fear that, this time, she would not be enough. That she lacked years, curves, thick brown hair, being a man; that she lacked whatever made him sigh.

She hoped, she so desperately hoped, that she could be his dream.

*

Daenerys was having dinner at Maege’s. Jorah had been invited but he didn’t want to impose on his aunt and… friend—Daenerys had not asked him if he’d be there when she had babbled, all lit up and excited and full of questions about Lyanna and what about Lyanna’s father (“long gone,” he had said, “no one of worth”)—and he was dying. He was waning, like aged leaves about to fall.

Gods, she’d been gone for two hours and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t function.

Why had he felt they were—sure, she came to him every day, but it wasn’t an obligation. It wasn’t an arrangement. They just happened upon each other, almost by chance; by a fluke of circumstances. He shouldn’t feel bad if he wasn’t the last person she saw at night. Or the first in the morning. Or…

He was overflowing with unsaid things he couldn’t tell her. He wanted her to hear them, to guess them, because how could he tell her, how?

He was drowning in choking aching thoughts.

They ran. And ran. And cut him down.

I can’t tell you this because it will make you flee. Is this me loving you more than you will ever love me? It is, I fear. I feel incommensurably sad. My heart aches, physically. Or is that my lungs? They are tears pushing in my head every time I breathe in; I don’t want to cry, and yet I do, because I don’t know where else to put this sadness. How empty my evening seems without you. I had time to do so much. I had time to cook and chop wood for days and read and watch the fire and write overdue messages; and now it’s not even bed time and I don’t know what to do.

I feel so sad I feel tired.

I feel tired just to escape this endless day. If you were there, Daenerys, I’d be begging the night to stretch.

But you are not there.

And I want it to end.

You’re having fun—you must have finished dinner now, you must be lounging in front of the fire, laughing with Lyanna. Your eyes must sparkle as you listen to Maege. Your eyebrows have shot to your hair when you learned she worked as a bear biologist. How you must look at her, hearing of her tales of trapping bears to check their health, and tag their ears!

But you are not here.

I feel physically the bones of my rib cage, they’re digging on my heart, or perhaps they want to break.

I want to shower your doorstep with letters so you will see how much I miss you; I want to beg, I want you to notice me again. And yet I want you to miss me.

I want you to notice I’ve gone out.

But I will resist less than you; because I need you and you don’t, apparently. You don’t. Your life shines no differently if you get some stories somewhere. And I, I’m behind, waiting for you to turn around. Is that all I am?

If I were sure you loved me—if I could believe you loved me, I would tell you how much I missed you. But I can’t even do that—not if it’ll drive you away, because I’m too intense and too needy.

Is there a day you won’t come back? Will this happen more and more often, with more and more days in between, and one day you will stop coming back?

I miss you.

I don’t miss you for this one night out.

I miss you because I fear it’s the beginning of our estrangement. Of the day you’ll forget me. And I’ll be alone in sighs of grey.

Why did you tame me for this?

I miss you.

I feel like I’m trying to breathe through my heart, and it hurts me, it hurts me—I cannot go on dreaming of your love. I must be sure of it or flee.

Flee so far that no grief will ever find me.

*

The next morning, Daenerys didn’t come. Jorah was miserable, then furious, then he would have begged for her time.

He angrily took out his phone to check the time, just in case all the other clocks were mistaken, and saw that he had a string of unread messages from Lyanna, all dated from the night before. She was telling him that the dinner with Daenerys had gone well and shouldn’t he stop sulking and come next time, because she was very _interesting_ (with a wink), and didn’t talk about him all night at all (with a smirk—oh gods, what did Daenerys _say_?), that perhaps if that’s how he suffered he should be designated to do so every year (with some obscure symbol he didn’t recognize) and that Daenerys had planned to leave for Fisherfolk’s Den at dawn, if he wanted to join her. Then came rather too many “Joraaaaaah” and “are you brooding?” messages, because he hadn’t answered her. The cheek of his niece! He never _brooded_.

At dawn? It was past nine! The Den was out of the way in the woods, what if Daenerys went into a cave and woke a hibernating bear? It would be just like her to try and snuggle with one.

Or what if she meant to peer into the river, trying to spot a wintery salmon, and fell into the rushing rapids? It would be just like her too.

Jorah rushed to Daenerys’ house to follow her tracks; luckily the day was clear enough and there was neither snow nor wind to hide them. The spoors of her snowshoes were printed cleanly into the snow; he followed them into the forest. There came a turn when they stopped leading the way to the Den; oh she was lost, she was!

The trees were creaking ominously, their branches grinding internally. It felt to Jorah the forest had turned to foe; he had been banished from her side and this army of trees was keeping them apart.

What if she was hurt? What if she went hungry? But she was clever and resourceful, she would know to find a shelter cabin and wait for help—she would. Wouldn’t she? How much of a head start did she have? He should take the time to examine her traces more closely, but he didn’t want to waste a minute.

And then a glint in the snow caught his eyes, and he bent down to pick a round, blue, pearl. Jorah kept following Daenerys’ tracks, and picked up pearls as he went. He was worried about her; and smiling at her, imagining he now adopted the same gait she did, walking on the same rhythm, both of them together even if they weren’t on the path at the same moment in time. They were joined in stories once more.

The sun pierced the trees and warmed Jorah’s back; the trees rustled gently. And then, he picked up a last pearl and when he looked up, Daenerys was some paces ahead of him, waiting, watching him, beaming.

“Jorah!” she exclaimed, and her cheer upbeated his mood.

“Whatever were you trying to do?!” he asked her, his earlier worry making his voice curter than he meant it.

She frowned at him, her eyes dancing with joy. “You’re supposed to say ‘I’ve come to save you, noble Queen!’”

He relented, the last of his anger melting in front of her smile. “I’ve come to save you, noble Queen,” he told her. “I’ve followed the pearls from your necklace of wishes!” and he showed her his pocket overflowing with the pearls she had sprinkled on the path.

She grinned. “You make me feel like I’m in a dream world. All the time,” she told him, like it was a detail, like she hadn’t made his heart flame up in hope, like she didn’t have dark and light powers over him.

“You had me so worried, Daenerys,” he told her gently. “This isn’t the way to Fisherfolk’s Den, I thought you were lost, I thought—”

“Yes!” she exclaimed happily. “I was getting lost in the woods, for my fairy tales. I was led there by the evil crone of the woods, Dosh Khaleen, who would have forced me to be entombed in the temple of Vaes Dothrak deep, deep in the forest! And you saved me! Because I had left pearls for you to follow! My dashing Knight!” And Jorah saw, then, how very foolish the depth of his despair had been.

He should have been concerned that she would come too close and still not be his; that she would come so close that he should have to suffer being her friend, and only her friend, because it wasn’t proper to even think of more; she was his darling dream and she should stay thus; young and bright and out of his reach.

“You look a bit pale, Jorah,” Daenerys said, peering inquisitively up at him. “Look what I made! Maege taught me how to make hot berry juice just the way you like it.” He took the lid-cup from her, trying not to tremble, trying not to burn under her stare, while she served herself and planted the thermos down in the snow.

“You made it well,” he told her, clearing his voice.

“Maege gave me the berry juice, and I dumped all the spices into it at home,” Home! She had said, she shouldn’t yield words carelessly like this, not her, “and she told me you didn’t like nutmeg that much so I put just a tiny bit, but cardamom and bits of orange shell and ginger and cloves and cinnamon I was rather generous with. It’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, defeated, his heart going to her, his smile stretching for her, against his will, against what was safe for him. And when she drank from her cup, and moaned in delight, shutting her eyes, he imagined she would make this sound in bed, in _his_ bed, and he hoped the cold would freeze him over so he wouldn’t sully her with his thoughts.

“So, do you actually want to visit the Den? Or your only goal was to get lost?” Jorah asked, looking fondly at her.

“To the Den!” Daenerys exclaimed.

The Den came with a bridge over the river, where the view to the partly frozen water was breathtaking. At least it was now that Jorah could look at Daenerys looking at it, her eyes drinking magic, or spouting magic, he no longer knew, but she changed the air he breathed; she changed everything. How very easy it was to see beauty, to see wonder, when she was by his side! How could anyone be a cynic with her in their life?

“They would swim here, usually,” Jorah said. “You could stay until Summer,” he added playfully, though his eyes were not jesting. “To see an actual salmon, for your research.”

“I’ve written something,” she answered breathlessly. “A draft? I think I know what my salmon fairy tale will be about, now.”

“Can I see?” he asked, hoping she would trust him with it.

“There!” she smiled triumphantly.

He nestled her piece of paper in his large hands, holding it so delicately, as he would her heart. Daenerys had not written so fast since her slump. She wanted to write for him. She…

“Tell me what you think?” she asked, her eyes worried, watching him as he read.

When he looked up, his eyes were so blue they turned to sun. And she felt relieved before he even spoke, before he even gifted the words that weaved her work in flowers and light. There was a kiss straining against her lips, begging to be let free. But listening to him speak like this, she had to ask again, she had to know.

And she dared ask.

“Why did you stop teaching, Jorah?” Daenerys prodded, her voice coating him oh so gently, like a single snowflake encompassing him in a coat of white.

He opened his lips and there was his secret, pulsing in the silence, struggling to escape his teeth and run to her, where she could cradle it and console it.

He searched her eyes, he who escaped them, and he swallowed.

“I stopped believing,” Jorah said, and his tears fell and kept running. “I lost… I lost the joy in stories.” He shook his head. “I lost myself.”

Daenerys smiled, and in her smile Jorah warmed himself, but still this ache ate his heart, but then she opened her arms, like a butterfly, a dancer—like a fairy, and perhaps she meant to embrace him or perhaps she meant to take flight, but he stopped, transfixed, and looked upon her.

“There were no children here,” she said smoothly, her voice honing itself on the words and he stopped breathing, for he knew… He recognized this; Peter Pan!—and Daenerys saw the words freeze him into place, and she fought to keep her smile anchored. “And it was night time,” Daenerys went on, her voice merging with the day and turning it to night. Is there a story-voice, the voice used to narrate, in which you read this here-story? If there is, Daenerys called upon it at the noontide. “But I address all who might be dreaming of Neverland!” her voice gained in power, and in her tone she could have quelled crowds; he could see her worshipped, by those who’d call her mother. The mother of stories… the yielder of dreams. “And who are therefore nearer to me than you think!” The day stilled, the sap stopped flowing, and all stood still on Bear Island, listening to that ringing voice. It stopped Jorah’s heart in its beats, this voice, it stopped his tears.

She looked at him. She looked inside him, she faced his fears and didn’t flinch.

“Do you believe?” she asked Jorah. He opened his mouth to breathe, but couldn’t; his cue was to come. “If you believe,” she said in earnest, “clap your hands!” And he knew what came next— _don’t let Tink die_ —but what would she say? She saw his eyes begging for her to complete the quote, and her heart went out to him as she finished her incantation. “Don’t let my Knight die.” And there he breathed in. His great hands fluttered, her breaths suspended on them—please, please, Jorah, let yourself believe… and he looked up at her, as if she were taller than him, and lightly brought his hands together, and first caressed them, palm to palm, and then, oh so softly, he clapped, he did! He clapped once, but then, looking at her, his blue eyes seeing far into her, he smiled, and he clapped, and clapped, until she could too, and she laughed, bells of laughs ringing! “I believe in fairies!” she shouted, her smile big enough to swallow an island entire. And, sobering, her smile froze into place and with eyes oh so serious, she added, very gently: “I believe in my Knight.”

“You gave me back something I had lost. Wonder,” he said, quietly. And it was true. He had been pulled under in a fog of time blurred, by Lynesse and the way she had sucked at his life, never realising his essence wasn’t the fuel she needed to thrive, by an indifferent university and lifeless colleagues, by himself who had stopped by and let years disappear from his life. And now—she was here, clearing the glass that separated his heart from his dreams, opening the door, and he—he shouldn’t repay her kindness by this love she shouldn’t have to hold.

She leaned in, and her lips grazed his cheek, so near the corner of his mouth, her hand smoothing his beard, and he would have believed anything, any magic of the world; he would even have believed she loved him. He would have believed her magic was for him.

“Come hither, now, my precious Knight,” she said, and kissed his brow, and hugged him, soothing him and when he said “I’m sorry,” she thought he asked forgiveness for the tears dampening her scarf; drowning her heart. But it was not so, Daenerys.

He was asking absolution for the hope she had invited in her arms when she could never love him back.

*

The sun did not linger long on Bear Island so close to the Solstice, though it did shine bright into the night when Summer was at its peak. The Holly Queen and the Oak Queen were mighty in the pine forest with their army of bears; and they loved their eternal battle so very much, almost as much as surely, they loved each other. Maybe they grasped at their powers so desperately to see in their world a trace of the other; such a dark shadow in the shine of Summer; such shiny stars in the darkness of Winter. It was a hard slap to a temperate balance, but it suited its inhabitants’ hearts very well, for they seemed to feel everything as intensely as their island did, in beam or glower.

Whatever the explanation Daenerys weaved up every day, an invisible hand snuffed the sun out of the afternoon a novella before tea time. This had been a time of excruciating dreams when they had to conclude their walks through the woods and go their separate ways, to long achingly and blissfully of the other; but now that Daenerys mixed her stars in Jorah’s night to make his hide glow and that he cast his shadows in Daenerys’ days to enhance her heart’s features, they anticipated the late afternoon gleefully.

Like every day—though it was not, was it? It wasn’t to be, that such evenings would last forever?—Jorah was in Daenerys’ kitchen, and she was baking cookies. He was to serve her, which meant on that particular day: Reading the Recipe. Daenerys always informed him when his attributions had capitals to them, because she thought that, as her Knight, he should capitalize his pride in the missions she bestowed upon him. She always smiled at him so sweetly, the Empress lines on her face softened in fondness, that Jorah did feel proud; proud to have earned a few seconds of these eyes; and he felt her hand around his heart, squeezing it out of heartbeats, and yet it—his heart—he, fought to give her more; more heartbeats, a meteor of heartbeats that would light her sky; even if it’d mean he’d spend all his life in that one single explosion to bring her joy.

Jorah had begged to help more, but she had been adamant and ordered him out of a helping hand: she needed him to read the recipe, and he was to sit _there_ , in the light, and he was to watch over her and check she did everything, and he was to do as he was told, thank you very much.

It was true she seemed to forget the steps as soon as he read them, which didn’t overly surprise him, because her imagination took her far from mundane tasks such as breaking eggs, but it seemed particularly acute on this late afternoon; almost staged. Almost as if he was missing some grand plan of hers. She’d make him repeat: “add the butter and the eggs, then the cinnamon, lemon zest, ground pepper, cloves, nutmeg and dried ginger…” Then she’d cock her head at him and say much too innocently: “I forgot, Jorah!” “Dried ginger,” he’d answer, looking at her hands sparkled with flour. “The whole line, please? I can’t remember,” she’d say looking all pixie-like, dressed in her innocent smile and her sparkly eyes and the blue woollen cardigan she seemed to favour.

She was so adorable, bundled in it, though the wool was much too thin for Bear Island, and he always feared that she would be too cold—but, no, her cheeks shone through a brush of flush. He could barely guess at her collarbones between the loose stitches that dotted the round collar, adorned with knitted autumn leaves and adorable pompoms hanging from a thread that closed the view of her gracile neck from his eyes; and from her neckline the stitches descended tighter in a diamond pattern all the way down to the bottom of the garment, where they once more transformed into leaves, stopped short by a hem of deep burgundy. If he prickled his finger and touched a droplet of blood to that hem, would it unravel, in a wood there in the tiny kitchen, leaving her bare before him? “Jorah?” she commanded, and he had to blink to get out of his trance. “Now, it says… roll the dough into a ball.”

The blue wool called his eyes back to her, mocking him with the way it was hugging her arms, the soft fabric snuggling against her wee, supple, biceps as she rolled the dough—how fierce she looked, rolling it around!—, and how it let him guess at the small soft spheres her elbows surely were—would that he had leave to graze his fingers upon one of them, and press it to raise her hand to his lips!

“Flour your hands and the work surface liberally. Roll out the cookie dough until about a quarter inch thick, adding more flour if it becomes sticky,” Jorah read on, his voice catching on the guilt of an unrequited thickness and uncalled innuendos; and on the sight of her, eagerly dipping her hand in more flour still, spreading it around like it was fairy dust. “And then, cut them out with a knife or your cookie-cutters.”

He looked at her small hands, fluttering about, her rings catching the light and calling attention to the smoothness of her fingers, the knuckles leaving no knot on the graceful lines he wanted on his skin, on his hair, on his neck—and he followed the diamonds up to her heart, where he wondered—

“Jorah!” Daenerys scolded him. “You’re not attending to your duties properly. Just carry on reading the rest of the recipes, I need inspiration.”

Jorah cleared his throat and Daenerys looked at him with narrowed eyes; oh, her eyebrows, so dark under her hair, her—“Mince pies,” he announced before she could get annoyed at him. “Soften the butter,” gods, the tip of her tongue was teasing her lip when she concentrated on her cookie-cutting work, a dart of pink, glistening under the light, a dark outbreak on her kissed-by-sunset-like-lips, “and add the flour, then mix in the sugar and a pinch of salt.” These diamonds, on her bosom slightly dipped by the flowery button a wicked designer had put there—if he could follow their outlines, would he find two tiny orbs—or were they lying flat, in wait of a prey that was not him, in the middle of these accursed rhombuses? He had to stop, he had to step out of this dream, “Knead the mixture briefly,”—she was swaying. He stopped reading, befuddled by the vision of her. She was dancing, swinging her brown linen skirt around, as she crossed the kitchen to put her tray of cookies in the oven. She had tights on, for the cold, but her feet were bare. Oh, she looked so radiant, and free! And she was dancing, three steps, a side step, three steps, and she twirled and she was… spinning his heart round and light and up in flight.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, her rebuff made endearment by her smile.

“A cat may look at a Queen,” he said, and his voice was trickily deep, deeper even than it seemed, “and a Knight may look upon a Queen.” He was looking at her above his glasses, at her silver hair tangled in her cardigan; he would have given three wishes to become her hair, just so he could graze the wool caressing her in the same fashion.

“It makes me believe I could kiss you,” Daenerys said, catching his gaze before he could hide it away.

“Can’t you?” he answered, his eyes fixed on hers, lest he dropped them to her lips. _Is this mine too?_ thought Jorah. _Can I claim your lips as mine?_

_Can I claim your time and your heartbeats and your cheeks and your eyes?_

“You shouldn’t speak so, not in an enchanted forest,” she said, breathlessly, her hands leaving ghostly tracks of flour on the wool flowers.

“Why not—Khaleesi?” Jorah asked, retreating behind another name to better prod at their boundaries; and now that he had crossed the mirror to her eyes, he couldn’t look away, couldn’t withdraw behind safe lenses of glass.

“I will believe you… Knight of Winter,” she told him.

They looked at each other.

“Well, then,” Daenerys said, and she drifted to him, and leaned in, and kissed the very corner of his mouth, there at the last border, East of his cheek; and he brushed her skin, just a whisper, and traded her another kiss, at the opposite corner of her mouth.

The oven tinged and Daenerys laughed, and the sparks in her laugh could have been giddiness or could have been play—and the trembling in her hands could have been nervousness or could have been cold.

And he wanted more.

More.

More.

*

“But surely your lovers have serenaded you with Shakespeare’s sonnets,” Jorah said, trying to say it offhandedly and not as if he was desperately seeking information.

Daenerys laughed, but she seemed a bit sad. “I think my ex must have thrown lyrics at me—she liked newish pop music though, not Shakespearean sonnets.” There was a question in the lilt of Daenerys’ eyebrows. Did relationships with sonnets actually exist? Then she dared, because she felt brave, on Bear Island. There were questions she wouldn’t have asked Irri for fear of disinterest, Drogo for fear of outrage, Daario for fear of mocking, Jon for fear of shining light on their differences. “Have you? Had sonnets quoted at you?"

“No,” Jorah sighed. “Perhaps that should have been a red flag,” he said after a beat, very seriously but with a slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes that surprised a laugh out of her. “I tried quoting them, though,” he said very softly, “but… I couldn’t make the beauty of them shine, I don’t think. Lynesse didn’t care for poetry. She matched every idea with materialism.”

“I would love to hear you recite a sonnet!” Daenerys blurted out, carried away by the thought of Jorah’s voice making Shakespeare come to life, four centuries later. Then she realized how that could be constructed… but that construction was the truth, so she didn’t mind if he thought that… she just hoped that she wasn’t too obvious. Yet she hoped she was, and that he could see right through her.

Jorah’s heart seized upon seeing Daenerys’ hopeful face, turned up towards him like a sunflower opening up under the sun. Jorah had never actually seen sunflowers, but he had imagined a feeling that came with them in books and movies, full of life and feelings that were safe to feel; and there was that feeling now, on her face, of melted yellow and seeds of black, clawing his heart when the happiness flooded.

He wanted to please her, he did… but the sonnets he knew spoke of love, and how could he speak of love looking at her, and for her not to see how much he did mean it—and yet, he wanted her to see it, if she felt the same, if she… if there was hope. And sometimes it seemed to him there was hope. Hope in the way her eyes followed him, lost in thought and a smile on her lips. Hope in the way she wanted to spend her holidays with him. Hope in the way she played with him, always.

And if he didn’t recite it to her now, her eyes would retract and turn sad. He never wanted to see her sad, never.

And so, he smiled, though he hadn’t meant to smile—it tore at his heart as his mouth moved. “Would you like to hear Sonnet 43, my Lady?” he asked, his nerves beating madly.

“Yes, my Lord,” she breathed. Would he truly gift her this?

“When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,” started Jorah, his golden eyelashes resting upon his cheeks as he closed his eyes for her to see, and he looked so offered like this, she wondered: would he see her if she smiled, then? Would he see her if she stepped closer, and kissed his eyelids?

“For all the day they view things unrespected,” Jorah went on, his voice carrying the words away to a place of dreams. She listened, transfixed. “But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee.” He opened his eyes, then, and they seemed to Daenerys a sharp charge of marcato in blue had accentuated his striking hue, in the short while she had missed his soft glance.

She stared, mesmerized, as his voice picked up, “and darkly bright, are bright in dark directed,” his tongue hitting the sounds born in his throat, a lethal instrument melting the words dark and bright and directed at her.

He paused, ever a master of pauses, to mark the beginning of a new quatrain, breathing in, silkily, his chest expanding as he began anew, raising his eyes from the shadows he had lost them to. “Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, how would thy shadow’s form form happy show,” and the repetitions of the words, made clashes in Jorah’s sombre voice, that meant to convey the yearning for happiest times! They rammed into Daenerys, making her tremble on her feet; he’d make her capsize in the snow by the last line!

“To the clear day with thy much clearer light, when to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!” His voice traded softly on the air now, longingly calling to brighter days, and Daenerys was sure one wouldn’t have needed to speak their language to understand what _clearer_ meant, when it was said in a such a crystalline voice, a voice that conjured the clearest water of a lake a long way up in the mountains.

“How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made,” Jorah beseeched, looking imploringly at her, “by looking on thee in the living day,” and she wanted to be them, that person in the sonnet, “when in dead night thy fair imperfect shade” and the impact of his tongue tackling dead and night at the back of his teeth, it would have made her sway had his voice not became a cloud of softness again, pleading at the sounds of a fair imperfect shade—“through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!” The words climbed his voice to reach the sky, even as his voice plummeted down to sound more deep.

“All days are nights to see till I see thee,” Jorah said, heart-wrenchingly, “and nights bright days when dreams do show thee me,” he concluded, his voice slowly going out, wisps of words floating away in the woods, sadness and hope melting together as they took turns of dance in fallen and risen vocalic consonants, waltzing away.

She looked at him; not speaking. And Jorah did not hear the thoughts she wouldn’t tell; he did not hear, _I’ve been turned upside down, I’m beating down there_.

He did not hear: _I’m hungry_.

He did not hear: _I’m famished_.

He did not hear: _I want you_.

But he did hear: _thank you_ ; he heard it in the one thousand and one nights widening her eyes.

*

The wind fluttered around Daenerys as she walked up to the Keep. She liked to rely on the fact Jorah would either be waiting for her at the beginning of the path, his weigh mostly on one leg, and his hands playing with his ring. She’d follow how his hip jutted, how the line of his knee pointed out. She’d imagine him as a sculpture, and she could, certainly, from a distance; he was so still, in this posture taken between strength and vulnerability; a stocky pillar that, upon impact, would not crumble but transform into a dance of dragons, taking a graceful flight to inner realms.

And if he wasn’t there, she would take the path, deep into the woods, feeling like she was walking in a story, to save her Knight from his hut in the forest. She loved these days too, because they’d be a good chance she could knock on his door and he’d open, his hair in disarray and his locks not yet crushed by snow or a hat pressing down on them.

Mostly she loved that she could rely on the fact that they would meet, each day, and every day, even if they had made no plan the previous day. Deep down, she knew it couldn’t last; one day he’d get tired of her, and remind her he was not paid to show her around the island when she was lounging there on her holidays. Or he’d remember he had more important people in his life; projects bigger than she was. But until her tale was blasted away, she wanted to keep dreaming as long as possible. She felt divided; one part of her scrunching her eyes shut and wishing with all her might that she may stay asleep; the other frolicking in a dream, aware and yet not quite that the day would come that’d take her Knight away.

On this fine morning with a chance of meteorological disaster, Jorah was waiting for her in the middle of the path, up to the huge birch tree he called the Ribbon Tree. Daenerys had decided she would write about this lady of the woods the very first time she had heard Jorah utter this endearment so gently, so fondly, looking at the tree’s ribbons as if he meant to free them away—to tug them from the bark’s embrace and release them in sunray swirls. She’d spotted him from a distance and waved, but now she slowed her step, drinking in the vision he made—a character made flesh. Here he stood, rooted like a sapient tree, his coat entwining him in its mercurial tails; here he stood against the light, his face in the shadows, with a single gleam of light, escaping from the snow, casting sinister highlights to his cheekbones; here he stood inside the wind, his curls a treasure waiting to be twinkled on, their ringlets looping round and round the air in a balletic voyage that, surely, was bound to her heart.

“Jorah!” she exclaimed. She couldn’t find any other words, none other; and he smiled, a smile of roast chestnuts and biting fresh pine, a smile of home and hunger. “Daenerys,” he answered, gravelly, worshipping her name. “I got you a gift!”

Her eyebrows shot up in anticipation: “A gift? Where?” She roamed the ground for clues, as he had taught her: there! His steps in the snow, leading to the Ribbon Tree. She went around it, speaking in hush tones to the honoured tree.

“What secrets are you whispering to our Ribbon Lady?” Jorah rumbled, and her heart soared—that he knew, without having heard, and that he didn’t mind… And then she saw it: a sledge. A wooden sledge he had pulled out of her stories, he had to have. It had the most perfect soft tartan pad on the pale wood. And the sett! It was the same as Jorah’s family, he had shown it to her—was this sledge with a Mormont emblem for her? Did etiquette allowed her to ride a Mormont—her train of thoughts derailed and she shook her head to clear it. The sledge was very flat, except for the… the what? “Jorah, what’s the prow for a sledge?” she asked, caressing the curve of it. “A brush bow,” he answered, coming up to her. It curled around itself like a wave frozen into time. She felt the boards, the screws, the soft pad—it was so smooth and magical!

“Come, in you hop, Khaleesi,” he rumbled warmly, and she all but fell into it. “I’ll be your reindeer on this occasion,” Jorah explained, and took the braided rope to pull her along. “But Jorah,” she protested, but glee cut her short. Oh, to glide along the snow, hanging to her rope, in the middle of the forest, with Jorah in front of her for her to feast on, to study how he walked, how he pulled, how he moved—how he kept the rope tense, but not too tense.

“I got you this one because you went to Bear Island looking for a salmon, Khaleesi,” explained Jorah. “It’s made of ash wood, you see. And we have a legend, about Fiona—perhaps you’ve heard of her?” She shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see her; but it was like he always knew what she was thinking. And besides, she would have wanted to hear the story from him even if she had spent all her days reading about Fiona.

“It was long before the Age of Heroes, long before the Ironborns ever set foot on Bear Island and lost it away to Rodrik Stark and gambling. But it was not theirs to lose and give, you see. Bear Island belongs to the Woodfoot—those who have the wood in lieu of feet. We are colonists historically,” he added sadly.

“Fiona was a greenseer, what you’d know as a three-eyed raven in the mainland. She wanted to exercise her gift from an island, and she felt called to the weirwood tree at the very centre of Bear Island… She had seen it in her travels. So she travelled, but she was attacked, and her ship was capsized. They thought she’d drown—but she transformed into a salmon and safely reached the shores of Bear Island, where she planted three ash trees, for mediation between the realms, protection and transformation.”

Daenerys never interrupted stories, if they weren’t a game of improvisation, but she exclaimed as soon as the full stop dissolved in the forest: “That’s so perfect, Jorah! Is that linked to—”

But Daenerys did not ask her question that day because the path came out on a clearing, that went up into a slope, and she could see this was the sledge ride Jorah had been leading them to. She hopped down and ran tugging on Jorah’s hand who kept a firm grip on the rope, though with snowshoes it made for slow progress and kept painting a smile on Jorah’s lips on each fumbling step.

They reached, finally, the top of the slope and Daenerys breathed in, beaming at Jorah. Their ascent must have taken them closer to the sky, for up here in a tiny nook between pines, it was so blue it couldn’t be cold; it was a blue sky that felt yellow, that felt warm, that felt like—Jorah. And the powder snow gathered all the sparks from the sun and cold crystal hugged them so hard the sparks broke free, and went to frolic on the other flake’s branches. Jorah was solemn and silent, as he often was when he wasn’t carried by words, but his eyes were fond.

“You will ride with me, Jorah,” she told him, eying the slope in sudden distrust.

He nodded, smiling secretly at her commanding tone, and sat down, his heels dug in the snow to keep the sledge from sliding down too soon. She sat down gingerly before him, trying to press her back to his chest without being too obvious, her ribcage spreading from the hammering of her heart, both in anticipation and of Jorah’s proximity.

She took the rope and he took it too, just down to her own grip—then she heard his voice, like thunder in a beautiful day: “Are you ready?” and when she nodded he kicked hard and down they went!

She could feel every bumps and hollows on that hill—so many stories for that slope to have grown gaunt, to have displaced the earth; and the speed of her Mormont and Ash sledge making them fly—yes fly, in a glide that was exhilarating rather than smooth, in a descent that left her heart feeling fairies were taking it in their grips, trying to pull it in the past and in the lands of stories. Somehow it seemed like they were riding the blue of the sky itself; somehow it seemed this was joy and life she was bumping on; somehow it seemed it would never end, and that her heart could fountain up more and more joy without ever coming short.

They swooshed at full speed and she felt sure they would crash into a tree when Jorah put his feet out and stopped the sledge. She felt slightly tipsy from the ride and leapt out, her head flying still, bursting with joy!

“Thank you, oh, thank you!” she beamed at him.

Jorah got up too, eying her hopping stance, and he could read in her eyes she meant to hug him, a split second before she moved and jumped into his embrace.

Jorah had not anticipated she would hold him this close. He had braced himself against the feel of her breasts against his chest—he had hardened his mind against hoping for her nipples to pierce his heart—it couldn’t be, in her winter garb. He had anticipated, perhaps, her navel—maybe for her arms against him and her hands on his back. He had known it would be bliss uprooted; heartbeats pulsing against the need he had to repress.

But this was not a hug. It was a meltdown of Daenerys’ essence into his arms. She moulded herself to him, snuggling into his chest, she purred and sighed and wriggled closer and closer to him; and he had to hold her to keep her upright, his hands taking too much space on her back, the smell of her hair licking his nose, and her contented sighs opening draughts in his heart, as she traced his coat. If he breathed through his mouth it was worse; he tasted her flavour, her perfume, he wanted to eat her whole. His heart was flailing.

He had an armful of Khaleesi and it was, it was, he couldn’t, he couldn’t survive this hug, he would faint, he would, and he reached down and put his lips on her neck, there on the curb under which her heart throbbed, not a kiss, just a nuzzling, just a touch, but then, her skin, her warmth escaping from her body to his hands, her breasts and softness so close to him, on him, melting into him—he—

She detached herself from him, and she looked up at him, her violet eyes impossibly huge, and she said, her bearing magnificent, “Kiss me,” and stopped his heart.

He leaned in, slowly, and grazed her cheek with his lips—where her cheek bore the faint line of the dimples that had been and would be. And it felt like she offered the soft skin of her cheek to his lips; he had never bestowed his mouth upon someone who so desired his touch. And a feral need, an upending want of seizing her, fumbling with her clothes, and, and—

“No,” Daenerys said, and in her voice he froze. And, frozen, he couldn’t move when she grazed his cheek, her fingers pressing lightly through his beard to his cheekbone. And he could not breathe when her other hand supported her as she lifted herself up on her toes, weighing on his pounding chest.

“No,” Daenerys said again, her voice soft as embers glowing under cinders. “I want a proper kiss,” and her lips, sure, regal, unyielding, took his, and his heart, shaky, tender, wavering, bowed to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me—O if I could but obtain knowledge! (...) For I can be your singer of songs no longer—One who loves me is jealous of me, and withdraws me from all but love, With the rest I dispense (...) It is to be enough for us that we are together—We never separate again." Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass  
> The "beautiful lady without mercy" is a small nod to John Keats' (1795-1821) "La Belle Dame sans Merci", itself inspired by "La Belle Dame sans Mercy" from Alain Chartier (1385-1430). The poem is about a fairy who seduces a Knight, then puts him to sleep and leaves him to wander the hills in despair.  
> "She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her." D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), Lady Chatterley’s Lover  
> Daenerys leaving pearls on the path for Jorah to follow is a slight nod to her dropping her ring in S05E10, and also to the fairy tale "Tom Thumb and the white pebbles" by Charles Perrault (1628-1703).  
> "There were no children there, and it was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: (...) “Do you believe?” he cried. (...) “If you believe,” he shouted to them, “clap your hands; don't let Tink die.”" J.M. Barrie (1860-1937), Peter Pan  
> The Holly Queen and the Oak Queen are adapted from the Holly King and Oak King figures in folklore. The Holly King reigns over Winter days and the Oak King reigns over Summer days; they battle year after year over dominance.  
> "A cat may look at a Queen" is modified from the "A cat may look at a king" idiom, which spouted many fairy tales and stories.  
> "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see (etc.)" William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 43  
> The birch tree is sometimes called "the Lady of the Woods" or "the Ribbon Tree". The tree is associated to books and writing as birch bark was used for scrolls and manuscripts long before paper as we know it was invented (1st century CE). Lastly, the tree is said to be a symbol of new beginnings and new found hope.  
> "Fiona" is based on the Irish myth of Fintan mac Bóchra, a seer who's indeed said to have changed into a salmon and planted ash trees.


	3. An Offering to Winter (December 19)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the rating was changed to E for this chapter.
> 
> Daenerys and Jorah will quote from: Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Verlaine and Emily Brontë.

The forest was eerily quiet—it seemed to be holding its breath. The branches took care to stay still. The snow, down, was soft under their feet and barely made a sound. Daenerys spied looks over to Jorah, but she had to draw him out of the cave he had retreated in after their kiss. How could her fearless Knight be afraid of love? His voice had been trembling on her name when their lips had parted, his hands stammering in the air, and she had relented. For him. She darted another glance at him; he was sullen, contemplating. She could read in the tensing of his jaw that he was thinking of her, and talking himself out of happiness.

As an intellectual, Jorah had always had very little patience with chatty people obsessed with flings, such as his obnoxious colleagues and clichéd students. He was supremely composed, in control of his emotions, and nothing as trivial as an infatuation was going to derail his mind, he reminded himself, burning holes in the ground and yet not seeing anything of the forest. Then he saw her at the corner of his eye and he thought of her lips on his, on her hands on him, and he was lost once more.

Daenerys could have had ordered him to kiss again, to kiss her more, she could have—but she wanted him to come to her. She wanted him to be ready. And so she had looked in his blue eyes shaking with emotion, and she had said, very gently: “We’ll go slow. We have all eternity,” and she had soothed his cheek, enjoying the feeling of his beard against her fingers, the slope of his cheekbone, the hopeful love shining in his eyes. He squeezed at her heart with his lack of self-confidence: how could he not see he was perfect for her? She didn’t want to hurry him, she wanted him to be free; she would never want him to feel truly coerced. But for her, slow had meant lazy kisses in front of a fire; she had imagined they could drink tea in his library, or her smaller one, and watch how the books reflected themselves in their mugs, an upside-down vision of Atlantis. And then she’d have brushed his cheek and kissed him, and they would have melted the tastes of their tongues in a new one. And, day after day, he would have come to see they were meant to be like this. If slow meant three steps back, if slow set him back from her, then she didn’t want _slow_. She wanted to swallow his soul now, she wanted him to pledge his soul to her _now_. And yet—she would wait. For him. However long it would take for him to believe her.

 _Nothing_ would have been going to derail him. Until her. Because now, apparently, his mind was overflowing with thoughts of her and couldn’t think of anything else. And if it thought of something else, he would think of it for her, through her, by her; he saw the world through lenses of her. He had known her less than a fortnight and already—she had made him better. She had made him want to be what he’d always thought he should; with her, he wanted to be worth it. He wanted to give her the best, and that meant becoming the very best he could be.

How could the electric current between them be so strong? The bond united them was stronger than it should have been—Daenerys’ head told her to take it slow indeed, to be wary of crushes that wouldn’t last, that she may have something mighty but that the bond had yet to be tested by time. Watch out for constructions based on wishes and rose-tinted glasses, fearful Daenerys whispered at her, thinking of the past and its dismays. She had felt slapped often enough by the words of people who’d accused her of sucking on their souls to write. And she knew she had rose-tinted glasses on; though not pink: glasses that had thorns and deep red roses, entwined around the gates of a cursed castle. But it didn’t feel that way for Jorah. With Jorah, she could take off her glasses and her eyes would not burn from the greyness of the world; she could see his soul and not wish to rewrite it entire so it wouldn’t suck _her_ dry. She could let go, at last, and abandon herself to his soul, and be free, free to live. He had given back her something she had lost; faith. Faith in herself.

And even more annoyingly, Jorah was feeling constantly aroused, he sulked on, staring moodily at the path. Surely he was too far remote from his teens to feel that way? How could she do that to him? It knocked his attention out of his brain to fix on this urge to ground against—to assuage this infuriating pressure, this need to possess her, and to be consumed? She haunted him, she haunted his needs, driving them mad, urging them up. He had been bedevilled—and it made him feel—energetic, even—manly. He wanted to be a chivalrous knight for her, why did his body betray him so? Maybe she wanted a courtly kiss, and courtly poems, and a safe place, but she couldn’t truly want to be involved with him. What would she think if she knew how much he desired her? Did that make him base? How would she react when she realized he wasn’t a sublimed Knight, but a—a—Winter Man who had fallen in love with her? Why couldn’t he be a season younger, so he could be something else than a Knight, something else than a dream, someone she could love back? Time, time, time, he _hated_ time, he despised it, why did it have to come between them, seasons dooming them away, both of them there and yet years away? How could he cut away from that, from time? How had time become his worst enemy? Or—was it?

Jorah made her soft with dreams. All the poems she knew and had loved for the words and the feelings she would never happen upon on this Earth, she now loved anew because they sang of him, they sang of them—she rediscovered Whitman through him. When once she had quoted _For him I sing_ , there had not been an _him_ for her to affix that surge of joy from her heart. “Him” had been all of them, all of the characters she had yet to write, all the humans who weren’t there but had to exist; then, later, for all the dreams she had dreamed on page. _As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past_ , she thought, looking at him so at home with the trees, so solid and changing. _With time and space I him dilate—and fuse the immortal laws to make himself, by them, the law unto himself_ , and such was Jorah. He was in all her life, though he had sprung into it but a dream ago.

Daenerys had such a spring to her step, free from her snowshoes in the well-trodden path, and he wanted to tell her—I imagine you walking the same way you laugh, and he wanted to take her hand, he wanted to hold her close! He wanted to be this man she thought he was, he wanted to be worthy of her, he wanted to make her happy through time, he wanted…

She wanted to bring Spring forward and erupt into the world in a shower of flowers! She wanted—but these stars were for her! The sparkles on the snow, the blue of the sky, the entire universe was for her. It was singing for her! There was no shadow in her that trembled at being found anymore. There wasn’t a shadow in her that wouldn’t face his light. She wanted him to find her, to see her, she wanted to beg him to tame her, and to tame him out of this further wait he had imposed upon them.

He was looking at her. Looking at her make life sparkle, looking at her live, and he, he was dreaming and he…

“Jorah!” Daenerys called, and extended her hand. “Come! It’s snowing! It’s snowing, Jorah!” she beamed. “Is that why you’ve been excited all day?” he asked fondly. Her mirth burst out of the frown she’d tried to summon and she fell back at swatting his forearm. “No,” she said, “I’ve been excited because—” _you’re there_ , her mind provided, “because it’s almost Christmas! And if it’s snowing, then we have to run! Run through the dance of snow!”

Would he truly step into her dream, if he took her hand? Or would they each dream their separate dreams?

He took it.

Let her break his heart if he could be deluded just for one illusion, just one make-believe life under the dome of a snow globe.

*

The first time Daenerys had visited Mormont’s Keep, Jorah’s ancestral home, Jorah had meant to give her a tour, but Daenerys had stopped dead in the library and looked so enraptured he couldn’t imagine to ask her to leave to visit the other rooms. And now, she all but ran to the library as soon as he had opened the door and she had hobbled out of her shoes. Though he did want to show her the huge kitchen of Mormont’s Keep, built for feasts of the past, and the dining hall with his ancestor’s chandeliers still hanging there. He could see her smile stretching as she’d swirl about the room, beaming at the thoughts of balls from times gone—and yet not. And he wanted to show her… the smaller library. In his bedroom. With the books he wanted to keep watch over him as he slept.

How would she look in his bedroom, looking at his bed, in solid wood, a dark oak shiny and precious, smelling faintly of the oil he used to maintain it? Would she caress his eiderdown, her small hand making a fist of its softness? And turn to him? And… see _her_ books, in the shelves facing his pillow? And—

“Jorah!” Daenerys complained. She didn’t _like it_ when he was gone from her side for too long, and he… loved that she missed him. He snapped out of his trance, arranging her tea and spicy biscuits on the tray quicker and putting it down on the small tea table. “There will be _no_ coffee table in this house,” he had explained to Daenerys the first time she had come over, “except for your morning coffee. Which means you may call the table a coffee table before your breakfast, and not after.” “But Jorah,” Daenerys had said, all august, “isn’t it always _before_ my breakfast?” “If that’s the case it’s also always _after_ your breakfast, and the window of your semantic freedom over that table is closing fast,” Jorah had said, and stuffed her with a piece of shortbread because he knew she otherwise would have the last word.

Daenerys stopped his fussing over the biscuits, pushing a book from the library in his lap.

“Read to me?” she not-quite ordered, her hands clasped on his forearm, her entreating eyes looking up at him. How could he say no? And yet—reading to her, it would make him soft, it would make him hope…

He looked at the book she had chosen, a hardback edition of _A Christmas Carol_ , the title inscribed in gold lettering, as was the “Charles Dickens” just underneath, in delicate capitals. The red and gold embossed tinsels adorning the cover, and their drawn shadows, called his finger to them, and he knew he was lost, because she was already radiant with an expectant beam…

He opened the book and cleared his throat, then was surprised into a cough when she snuggled up at his side, resting her cheek on his arm, squeezing his wrist. She looked at him worriedly, an idea of a smile on her mouth, but she only bundled herself closer to him, and he just wanted to wrap her in a soft blanket because she was a bit cold, she seemed a bit cold—and she took his hand to make him turn the first page. How profoundly unworthy he was of her—and how he loved her!

“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me,” Jorah started with his story voice, the one he knew she liked, because she who was always ready to spring out of her box would become so very, very still when he used it, her eyes losing focus as she watched him. He liked to imagine all her attention went to her hearing, and that he made her travel on the words, on the words of stories, differently than she could do it reading in silence, in her head. “May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D.” He made his voice ring ominously in the room, trying to match the wind that was howling outside, the fire that was crackling inside. Dickens was meant to be read aloud, he could have—he _had_ —made a lecture about it. And perhaps—perhaps, now, perhaps now that she had rekindled wonder for the world in him—he could do so again?

He turned the page after the preface, and paused, breathing in. He liked that silence just before the beginning of a story, when in a cinema the lights would went out and the production logo would rise from the night; when in a theatre, the curtain would rustle and move to open on another world; when, in a book, there was the last moment of nothingness before stories rose again, to paint words over hearts, and make them see themselves in an all new way.

“Stave One: Marley’s Ghost,” he announced, then paused once more, elated to feel that, as impatient as Daenerys was, she took delight in the piling of these small waits. “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that,” Jorah smiled, curling the words up, a flat no-nonsense tone belayed by the flicker of narrative detachment. How happy he felt, in this sentence, reading it to her, feeling her warmth on him! “The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to,” how he liked trying to read out that apostrophe, trying to sound out the phantom limb of the words Dickens had meant to place there, and to enumerate, and repeat Scrooge’s name, his voice playing on all the sounds. “Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail,” Jorah declared solemnly.

“Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail,” Jorah said drily, his voice crackling to make the droll spark and soothing it with a deadpan tone that sounded entirely too posh to not have been in jest. Daenerys watched his throat move as he read, mesmerized, attracted to the heat source he was. “I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade,” he carried on, entirely focused on his reading, and that perhaps more than anything won her yet again to him. He was reading on; his voice droning and undulating and warm around her brain. But she could no longer discern Dickens’ words; her eyes drifted from his throat to his eyes to his lips—to his lips moving and dancing and his jaw flexing and moulding all those sounds. He slowed, darting a look at her, sensing she was no longer listening. She was smiling, pressing her lips against a smile—a smile holding her heart, a smile holding her joy, it would burst out in laugh or flames. And her eyes, they were trying to keep him all in, and he, he was sensing her moving from his words, and he was coming closer, seeking her eyes, looking to reassure her, he was—she heard it in his tone.

And she lost her eyes to his mouth, once more, and then, she moved, and took his lips, cutting him off, seizing his shoulder to move him closer to her, and she pressed her lips to his smile.

“I do not want to go slow,” she said against his mouth, panting, “I lied,” she kissed him, “I want you, I want more, I want—”

“Daenerys,” he said, feeling the book’s hard cover digging in his ribs between them, “Daenerys,” but how could he resist her, when she was kissing him, caressing him, her hand following his neck, toying with his curls, and pushing him back to her, as if she would die without more and more kisses?

“I want to make love with you,” she pleaded, her hand holding his cheek so that his eyes had to look at her, and he, he couldn’t say no, but he had to hold back, he had to because—

“You’ll tire of me, my darling Queen,” he said as gently as he could, cupping her jaw and feeling his arm flex with the need of bringing her back to his lips, where she belonged.

“Jorah, I want you,” she ordered, “I can burn you, can’t I? You will let me?” and he closed his eyes but he could still feel her hand, and her lips against his—oh, to feel her kiss come to him in the night of closed eyes, where he could not escape!—, and the yearning in his heart that wanted to give in to what they both wanted. Give in to more. More more more.

“Am I too much for you?” she said in a small voice that broke his heart. He wanted her proud, he never wanted her to diminish herself, he wanted her… “Or am I not enough?” she added, letting her hand slip away from his cheek, so slowly, as if she wanted to keep each memory of that last slide.

“No,” he growled, catching her hand, looking at her furiously. “You are not too much and you are certainly _not_ not enough, I forbid you to think that, it’s me, I am not enough for you, and too—”

“And I forbid _you_ to think you are either!” she snapped.

They looked at each other, she wintry and he fiery, until she reached for him and he reached for her, their needs collapsing in another kiss. “I’d longed to kiss you again,” Jorah confessed, and she kissed the outline of his mouth, until she’d rounded it all, and darted her tongue to the corner of his lips, where he caught it, kissing her deeply. “I’ve longed to taste you,” he added, and she purred into his kiss, stretching to feel his chest.

“I’ve never… I’ve never before… I wanted to have sex but with my heart cloaked, you see?” she admitted, her voice much too shy for her fearless soul. He wanted to hurt every person who made that shyness in her voice grow. “I looked for love, but… I never found it. I never _felt_ it. And I stopped believing it existed in our world, outside of dreams.” She paused and he soothed her back, listening with all his might, his heart breaking for this Daenerys of times gone who had felt so alone.

“And so, I didn’t want them to know anything about me, and I think it was the same for them, my exes. And it felt good, the physical experience of it—it did feel good. But it never felt… magical. It wasn’t a dialogue of our senses, it was each of us doing a monologue on our side of the stage.” She stopped again, and looked through him, to the very core of him.

“But with you… I want to make love. I want to have more than an intense, sparkly massage. I want to know you, all of you, and for you to know me; all of me. Because you are the only one who can speak to my soul,” she added lovingly, her fingers gliding up and down the bones of his cheek. “Say yes?”

And he wanted to say yes. He wanted to say yes more than anything. He wanted…

“Daenerys,” Jorah said, her name stretching agony to eight full letters, “even if I—we can’t—I don’t have…”

Her hand went down his chest, drawing his breath and his heart out. “There’s nothing to fear on my side, if there’s nothing on yours, Jorah. That magic pill? I’m on it,” her fingers were so close to his belts, so close, “and I’m all checked.”

His breathing shuddered, about to give in.

“I want you now,” Daenerys said, tucking his heart inside her sweetly yearning _now_ , her eyes calling to him.

And he let his hand answer her call; going to her plump lips; grazing them oh so faintly, a touch too light to entice a moan, too heavy for her to turn her eyes away.

“Are you sure, my Queen? Now?” he asked gently to rile her up and prod her at once.

And he kissed the indignant “Jorah!” on her lips away, his blood boiling with the desire her piqued regal attitude always made simmer in him.

“I want us to make love the way we speak,” she sighed, upon his lips, snuggling into him.

“We will. I’ll give you a massage, a very gentle one, and I’ll tell you a story. How does that sound?” He asked it so softly, and she would have whined in protest, her heart hammering in fear and need. In fear that—this first test of reality would take away all that she had with him. That, finally, he would see something of her that was wanting. That—but his smile was a trickle of sun, a gentle flame of fire swirling around her, making her doubts about herself go up in invisible smoke.

Daenerys was watching him, her eyes looking at him so trustfully, he felt his heart seize. She looked at him, worrying her plump lips just a bit, then she set her jaw—or that she would be so worried, his fearless Queen!—and took off her sweater. She had a shirt under it, and she worked on the buttons, and the light traces of her hands in the air twisted the want inside him.

He was looking at her with smouldering eyes, his smile burned away; she felt the polestar of this stare. She could feel herself heating, she could feel his eyes follow the rise of the blush on her cheeks as she wriggled off her trousers, thankful she enjoyed running around barefoot in his or any house.

“Lie down,” he told her, getting up himself from the couch and bending back down to kiss her cheek, her lips, grazing them with his thumb and getting lost in her eyes and she moved to take more kisses—but he wanted to take it slow. To make it magical for her. He wanted to prove to her she could have love in this world.

Her heart was hammering—she didn’t quite understand what he meant to do, and it was all like a wonderful surprise. She felt all at once the gift and the recipient of such gift and she—shivered just a little, feeling the smooth linen caressing her naked belly, teasing her breasts through her bra. She felt petite on his huge couch, lost between the two armrests with too much space to spare. She could not see him, she could only feel him, hovering next to the couch, never knowing when—

He kissed her shoulder, delicately, and she jumped just a bit. So nervous and yet—Jorah could see her making the tiniest grinding movement against the couch, and he felt a pang in his core as if she were moving against him. He trailed his hands—were they warm enough? they seemed worn and warm comparing to her skin, her snowy skin with a trace of ice blue running through her veins.

Jorah was kissing her shoulder blades, and she shivered—how could that zone be erogenous? But it was, because it was his lips on her skin and she, she wanted him—could he guess her pussy was pounding a wild parade to his kisses? He lay his hands on her shoulder, and massaged her so gently, with hands so warm and big, she melted in relief inside of their touch. Then she felt him move, she felt his breath against her ear, his curls nuzzling at her temple, and he murmured: “Move your hands between your legs.”

He could feel her go bright red as she thrust her hands to her ache, closing her thighs around them, and he wanted to show her, to prove to her that she could also bring herself pleasure when she was with him, that she wasn’t cut from herself—that the love they shared would bring her closer to herself, not further. And it aroused him, so much, to see her like this, almost bare on his couch, to see her back slowly thawing, her hips loosening as she trusted him not to laugh or judge.

His hands—her hands—Daenerys felt herself heating up under both their pair of hands upon her, down and above, the swirls and caresses merging and dancing together, in rapid chatter, in whispered confessions, in intimate talks, and she could feel herself—unwinding, she could feel the coils of self-doubt disappear under Jorah’s massage, and she felt… completely relaxed, and grateful. So grateful. And just as that deep contentment began to edge into the unrest of an unmet need—

He kissed her neck and she sighed then, and he knew he would crave these sighs for the rest of his life, that he would seek for ghosts of her moans until the death of the last word. He kissed her again, to hear it again, and she sighed, her round cheeks going up, making her Venus dimples dance in such a way that he just had to—kiss them.

Jorah kissed the small of her back, following an invisible line she was sure he could see, and with his warm hand on her thigh, and his warm mouth somewhere above a nerve that shot right through her, she just had to—“Jorah,” she called, and she could sense his smile on her skin, and his hands on the fastener of her bra, moving to unhook it.

“Yes?” he answered, moving her softly around, so that she was lying on her back, looking up at him. How changed her eyes were now! When they had been frightened and so, so youthful—now they were proud and—expectant, watching him, daring him to please her in a stately smirk.

Jorah tilted his head to her, and smiled too, and she felt herself fall for him one time more, while he caressed the straps of her bra down, and took it off.

Oh! To touch her bosom, with his hands, to!… Under the swell of her breast, her skin was hot—but nearing her tit, her smooth skin was colder… oh he would make her burn entire! Not one pore of her skin wouldn’t come piping hot, ready to let out pearls of sweat, to cry sigh of pleasures.

Daenerys was feeling so worshipped. Her nipples were hurting, soothed only by the whisper of his feather light fingers, teasing the hurt away to replace it with hunger. He was looking at her, saying “What land is this?” his voice dulcet and his fingers—

—caressing the pattern of her areola, it was art, he had to tell her—“What colour would these be, madam?” her murmured against her nipples, and she shuddered his name in response. “Rose Pompadour making love with the shadow of great green pines, varnished by fairy dust?”

“Jorah,” she answered, pushing her nipple towards his lips, then pushing his head down to it, when he would not cooperate quickly enough, his eyes lost on the sight of her; and how beautiful she felt, under his gaze! How beautiful and powerful and—his lips closing on her, it was a ripple in the fabric—

—of reality, to taste his tongue to these offerings for his soul, to taste and tease and to follow his tongue against these blue veins on her flesh breaking in tiny dots of something that was not cold, because she was flushed, but that had to be frozen heat, that had to be the beginning of her delight. He wanted to explore the maps formed in these risen lines, he wanted to feast his eyes on that black shadow pooling under her nipples, because they had arisen—for him! For his teeth to suck and tease up to his tongue and between his lips, so he could crush them—just a bit, just enough that she—

—moaned, feeling his lips closing and making pleasure burst out of a new kind of kiss. She rose to take his lips and kiss him, and lost herself in his arms, and felt his curls, his neck, his shoulders, and she tried to undress him, but he growled softly at her, nuzzling her nose, smiling a feral smirk against her lips. “Not yet, my lovely lady,” he drawled, “did you not pay attention?”

His heart beat on her frustrated pout—he could see in her eyes she was pondering whether she would overtake him, or if she would continue to follow his lead. He kissed her moue away, and gathered her in his arms, her back against his chest, and the cleft of her bottom surrounding his sex; it was a torturous revenge he had, foolishly, not gambled on.

She heard his defeated growl and she pressed herself against him, revelling on the sensation of his bulk sighing on all her back—it felt so good, to encircle him like this with his arms surrounding her, and she could lay back on him, let him hold her, where she could feel safe, where she could feel nothing could ever take him away. And then his hands began to move from her ankles to her thighs and she still did feel safe—safe in her trust he could hold her as she fell.

He could see tiny knots of holding back still in her elfin body, and it hurt him so, that she wouldn’t feel entirely at ease, that she had been disappointed—or frightened? Had one of them hurt her? The thought made him boil with rage, it made him—; but he had to be strong and transform that rage in kindness, so she could see she could be the Queen she was meant to be as she soared. He grazed her knickers, his heart drinking her gasp, his cock pulsing when his fingers caused her to buckle against him.

“I promised you a story, after your massage,” Jorah drawled in her ear, and she saw stars, with her body engulfed in his, his fingers on the core of her pulse and his shaft at the mercy of her bum. She pressed against him, to get him back, and was rewarded when he growled low in her ear, the softer sounds between each consonant holding a trace of a moan.

Jorah took a bracing breath, gritting his teeth against the pleasure she seemed adamant to shot up his cock, and slowly, so very softly, drew a circle around her clitoris, praying all the Myths she would like his story. She took a shaky breath and he continued, tracing a N, and then a C, and then a E, increasing and decreasing the pressure, writing the last letter almost with his nail.

What was he doing? Her clitoris pulsed against his finger, made famished by this tease—what _was_ this? “Once,” said Jorah in the deepest voice she had ever heard him use, and she trembled against him, her soul searing at she realised what he had in mind, her heart burning that he would elaborate such a loveplay for her, and her sex clenching, trying to grasp a form that wasn’t there—

“Upon a time,” continued Jorah very slowly, his finger tracing the letters as he went, dissolving in her breathy moans, and the tiny impacts she made against him, that kept making the words he attempted to save burst as he tried to keep track of his story. He needed—he teased her mound, moving his hand under her knickers, playing with the curls there he’d spied on—they were silver blonde, like her hair, and he could follow them down—

—her lips, his fingers were between her lips, teasing her open and closing them back on a travelling finger, oh! his journey, his tale, his voice drawling on her neck, “a Queen danced,” making blossoms of heat bloom as he kissed her neck, and he pressed her to him, and she tried to find release, grinding herself to him at her back, seeking his fingers up front, gasping—

She was reacting to his caress so quickly, sighing almost before he pressed down, calling him back when he drew away to build up her pleasure, rhythmically caressing and tapping and coaxing her pleasure, unhooding her gorged pearl so she would better feel the wind of his skin as it circled a magic waltz upon hers.

“… in the arms of a Knight,” Jorah was saying, his voice strained, as strained as the taut muscles in his abdomen, as taut as himself was, pulsing against her, as she tried to move her hips so it could touch her more, she needed, she needed—oh—

It was soft, so soft between her intimate lips, and then inside her it was softer still; softer even than her mouth, softer even than her tongue. It was soft as a blanket of snow with no sharpness of ice, soft as a roaring flame with no burning of fire. And yet there was such a breaker of violence raging around it; her panting breaths, tearing down his chest to the centre of his belly, to the tip of his sex, pulsating there; her folds shuddering and contracting around his fingers; her belly tensing, her bosom heaving, sweat breaking upon her skin to meet his lips, tears of want and need her skin wanted to cry.

She knew he was golden, she had known he was ginger sun and copper warm, but this, his fingers speaking to her, he in strokes and swirls and she, answering in turn in pulse, gripping him there, keeping him there and letting him go, so he could press down again and then—a pulse, and bursts of heat, licking all of her skin, heat in her head, she couldn’t, she had to, she—

He could see the moment her head tried to keep control, though her thighs contracted with the need for release, he could see it, feel her pulse crying for it, and he held her closer, his arm encircling her, his fingers crooking inside her, to keep her there, his voice soothing her: “I have you, my darling, I have you—you can let go, I’m sworn to protect you, to serve, and the storm outside, you have to outthunder it, my Queen, you have to, I love you, you can let go, I have you—”

The heat was bursting her brain out of her head—

“Jorah!” she gifted him, her head thrown back on his shoulder as she let go—

The heat tearing her imagination down—

Her legs were quivering around his hand—

And she felt propelled out—

Her back pressing her heat to him—

She felt teared out of place—

Pressing on where he was dying without her,

Her body and mind meeting not quite in reality, not quite in mist, but—

And pressing her heart to his, his that was overrun by love and awe—

His fingers—

And she soared—

She couldn’t escape, she…

She was soaring on the strings of the vowels she freed just a ripple sooner than the pulses they spun round with—

She felt… he was—

And her throbs rang a chime later than the throaty sighs that echoed them—

He was— _pound_ —he— _pound_ —was— _pound_ —he——

“She flew to the end of the sky," Jorah said softly, moved beyond the horizon she had just reached, that he got to hold her, abandoned to his arms, that he got to, slowly, oh so very gently, wait as she stalled, hovering in the sky in a pounding reverberating through time, and then, oh so softly, protect her as she floated down back to him, where he could enfold her in a kiss, and wrap her in his love.

This hug was unlike any other hug she had ever had. She fitted in his arms. She felt as if her body was rearranging himself to better mould itself to him—she wasn’t melting, she was… belonging. She was merging with him. There wasn’t any discomfort, any displacement. His warmth was hers. The embrace was timeless. “I want to feel your skin on mine,” she called airily from her ageless high glide; and felt tremors of fear when his arms left her—“yes, my Liege,” he answered softly—she had forgotten he couldn’t magic his clothes away, forgotten his skin came at the price of his warmth. The jolt gathered herself to herself, and she moved back to watch him, entranced. Their fire was throwing leaps of light across the library, jostling story-gold and nightly-dark together; and then it moved—to estrange the flicking flames and pull the not-quite black away. This asunder-together ballet danced; and danced; its fluttered feet roaming Jorah down and up. His hair caught the gold; his skin drank the glints; and his veins, his bones, his lines and crinkles, they seduced the dark. They enthralled it to italicize his every feature, every single bristle of the clothes he slowly disregarded, for her, his eyes not bashful now—oh that they were no longer. They were focused on her, wild and dark in the wildly dark room; and he was a book amongst books, realer than all stories, real after the last page—a man amongst men; and hers.

Her eyes upon him—she would burn him. She did burn him; he was aching, raging to be within her, to catch her flame in her arms and roast them both in it, destroy them both before they’d be reborn. His cock was beating deep down his loins, a craving hungry pulse, a bass pounding of yearning need. He unbuttoned his yellow shirt—and he had dreamed, every day, he would undress before her, but he hadn’t _believed_ he ever would; oh her ravenous eyes, following his hands, pecking at his skin, and yet relishing at him serving her! He took his time to shed off the shirt, rolling his shoulders, throwing his head back and his chest forward, for her, and slowly, oh so slowly, he peeled it off, bathing his back in firelight; and in her gaze he felt magnificent—she was looking at him with such eyes!

She was the witness of a halcyon beauty come undone; she was his downfall. Jorah was on his light bare feet, tall and bold and fine, the muscles on his chest and back catching the light, the line of hair tantalizing in their descent down his strong chest, glowing softly, the sheen of perspiration upon his chest and the gold of his fur dallying with aurous lights. And his hands were hovering on his belts—he had two, who had two, did he mean to drive her mad?—, taunting her, and she could see, she could guess, the raised shape in wait there, straining to be let free and come to her, at last, and she wanted to devour it, to pledge him to her; she wanted him to succumb. She wanted his throat offered to her to go for the last kiss; she wanted his eyes lost in hers in blissful surrender; she wanted his muscles to cave, his statuesque frame to shudder; she wanted his voice to buckle on her moans; and she wanted his cock to concede to her folds.

His hands—she always did love them, their sheer strength, their sheer size, their weathered tan, their raised veins, the bones playing under his skin, and his ring; now they were removing one of his belts, completely, the swish of it making her hold her breath; and his hands moved to the second one, unbuckling it, moving it out of the loops. And then—his fingers flew to his fly; unbuttoning it, while he ground his jaw, straining against himself. Daenerys licked her lips, slowly, watching him, watching him in the light and the light in him, as the black veil of his pants went down his hips, down his thighs, down his knees—and were off, leaving her view almost unobstructed. His dark purple boxer shorts, increasing the golden tan of his skin, clung closely to his shaft, which she could see strain up out and to her.

Jorah was suffering deliciously. His heart was tearing itself up seeing her like this, offered on his couch, in naught but her soaked knickers and lustful blush; his lovely Loreley. He would never leave her and she would never be cursed; and she would welcome his kisses; an enchantress laid bare for him to weave her in new spells; a siren calling to him and meaning to make sweet and vibrant love to him. He felt prey and hunter; and he only hoped he would not spill before he could be home, inside her, and had made her soar. Watching her eyes watching him, he let his thumbs slide on the slope of his hips, hooking under his boxers, and, at last, he stepped out of them and joined Daenerys on the couch, laying on his side to kiss her down, laying her on her back, and dying when her cold dainty hands felt his sack, and his length, and he shuddered, pulsing in her hands and feeling his crown surrender a few drops in deference. Her fingers followed the offerings round and round his crown, caressing them into the soft skin of his shaft, moving her hands up and down and he was losing his mind, growling, and he caught her hands, putting them up her head, and kissed her down. With his lips upon her sex, he could let go of her hands, to tug her knickers down. The fabric brushed his lips as he disposed of it; and at last he could feel her flesh and her taste on his tongue.

Her thighs were so soft, soft at the softest silk. Her pussy was panting, dripping on his lips—to massage him, to mould him to her? He drank at it all, from her slippery pink flesh, his nose drunk on her smell, his tongue intoxicated by the flavours exploding in his mouth, in his mind, and he had to—plunge his tongue deeper, to drink her cry too, he had to pluck her raised pink bud in his mouth and suck at it, and his hands shuddered on her shakings thighs, her velvety skin burning his coarser skin. He was grinding into the couch, aching, desperate, and she called to him—his devilish saviour, his sweet temptress—he kissed his way to the inner of her thigh, kissing its plumpness, relishing in sighing upon this torturously soft gift, tracing the faint white lines upon them with his tongue and losing his mind on her throaty moans. And he kissed her thighs up, up, lifting her legs as he went, and she, she retreated on the padded large armrest, luring him to her smell, on his knees just under her, his knees blessed with the shadow of her round buttocks, he wanted them flesh on him! He wanted… Worshipping her, their eyes locked, his abdomen clenching, clenching, clenching, and he waited, just one last wait, one last wait before the best story, the first, but she wasn’t that patient, she wasn’t, and she took his cock in her hand, teasing it to her pulsing opening, wanting to swallow him, and oh, the pressure, his eyes rolled and rolled, knocking themselves upon his nose but he was; he was!

Her vagina clenched and beat, trying to call him to her, yearning for his touch. He was teasing her, it was delicious, it was unbearable, and she caressed herself with him, her finger circling his penis at the boundary between them both, on the shore were honey clear as trust pearled, and she fondled herself with her harvest, hearing his growl, and he moved, filling her up, moving her down so her cheek bums dug on his knees. She rolled around the armrest, her hair spilling in waves down the couch, and her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see—she could feel his lips, sucking at her nipples, his hand, holding her hips to him and moving her, her own fingers, dissociated from her, rounding her pleasure up in the pen of her core; pulsing and raging and yet unlimited, reaching out to everything that she was. There was a collapse in her belly, a falling of her nerves, a sensation of vertigo when the next step is not felt, as they plunged to pleasure and, she couldn’t, “Jorah! Come now, with me!” she ordered, and with a reverent and possessive “Daenerys!” Jorah tumbled up with her.

Daenerys’ smile was running after her breath as she played with Jorah’s curls. His own smile was stamped at the corner of his eyes. Daenerys kept waiting for the _tristesse_ she’d always felt after flirting with glorious death; and she had felt closer to it than ever before, she had truly let go! She prodded the corners of her mind for any melancholy, any sensation she would feel now more hopelessly alone than ever. But there was no lugubrious fall awaiting her; she was feeling satiated, and edacious, and wonderfully sore, lounging into Jorah, his warmth; his safeness; and smelling him, feeling his still semi-hard cock resting on her thigh, she knew she would want him again before a chapter of time could go by.

“Let me take you to bed,” Jorah rumbled, and his voice, roasted in the roughness of their cries, flared up down her ear, down her belly, between her legs.

“Yes, my Knight, carry me away, I demand it,” she answered breathlessly, and her heart skipped a beat when he did just that; he wrapped her in a soft blanket, pure white, so she wouldn’t catch cold, and gathered her in her arms, to march her to his chambers. He didn’t switch on the lights and that walk in the dark, through unknown sinuous corridors, made her heart beat with the excitement of stories; and her sex beat with the excitement of him. He talked to her in a voice made for night; of stars and Queens and the books that would welcome her.

His bed was an island itself; an intimidating and comforting island of warmth and strength, just like he was. She let him fuss over her, covering her with his soft eiderdown, as she clenched her fists in it to feel its softness, trying to depict the titles of the books on the library that took all the wall in front of his bed. She was sure—she was sure her books were there, just at eyes’ height—his height, not hers. He turned on a small light, that cast a light of dawn bathed in sunset in the room. How did he not feel the cold, gloriously naked in the almost-dark? The soft sheets were cold against her skin, and she longed for him to join her and warm her up. She set back on her fluffy pillows, stretching, smirking at him, eying with relish his ginger curls, his cheekbones, kissed by half-light, his cock, semi-hard and as commanding as he was, the veins lining it so clearly visible, she wanted to—lick them. Would he let her? Worship him?

He was watching her, hovering at the foot of his bed, because—because he felt such awe, to see her there, looking so comfortable all tucked in his midnight eiderdown, nuzzling into his pillows, her naked skin on his sheets—the sheets he had thought of her in. She looked so happy, looking at his books, at his bedside lamp, at him! Her naughty smirk, with her rubbed in lust eyes and her tousled hair, by his hands! Her plump lips still blushing from his kisses, from the scratch of his beard! Her freckles, glowing in the flush of their lovemaking! Jorah was feeling so happy, so very happy, so fulfilled; so stirred: all his wishes had come to pass.

“Jorah,” she called softly, looking at him with a softer smile, her cheeks radiant, “I love you.”

His eyes misted over, so moved was he, he had to grasp at the footboard.

He joined her in the bed, cuddling into her, kissing her neck, her cheek, her brow, her lips. She was cold again, he had to—he enfolded her in his arms, all her back touching his chest, his legs, his sex, and he thought he would die of bliss.

“I love you, Daenerys,” he answered belatedly.

“You make me so happy,” she said sleepily, nuzzling into him. “The happiest in the world. I want you forever.”

And his heart broke into a thousand pieces, because forever—he couldn’t give her forever. They had a few years, at the very most, before age tore them apart; a few years, at the very most, before age turned him to dust. He shouldn’t speak. He shouldn’t spoil her joy.

But he did.

“We won’t have forever, Daenerys,” he broke it gently to her. “Time is running out and age is running thin.”

He felt her shudder in his arms, turning to ice once more. “Stop,” she pleaded.

“Whatever you see in me, you will stop seeing when winter sets in,” he whispered, his voice breaking, and the tears he had tried to hold on to fell on her hair.

“No,” she protested vehemently, trying to turn into his arms, but he wouldn’t let her; he was bathing her silver hair in tears and he didn’t want her to see…

“What if I fall ill?” he asked.

“What if _I_ fall ill?” she retorted, still struggling in his arms, kissing them where she could reach them, and she was breaking his heart. She would never win against time, never! Not even his Queen.

“But for you, it will be in hope… for me, there won’t be hope. Night is setting in—this is twilight,” he explained gently, trying—and failing—to keep his voice steady.

“Better twilight bathed in light than a dull endless day of grey! Better night with millions of stars than a day that never shines,” she said, and she wriggled out of his grip, and turned to face him, running her hands up his neck, her thumbs setting, gently, at the corners of his mouth, kissing him. And kissing his tears, and brushing away the tears agonizing in his beard.

“What we just shared, was that not forever?” she asked. “Was it not timeless, to you?”

He had to acquiesce.

“Then we do have forever,” she scolded him. “A thousand tempestuous forevers.”

He couldn’t help but kiss her then, her who loved him, and wanted to take time out; and she smiled, smiled, smiled against his kiss, smiled and smiled and smiled and then smiled no more, because she was smirking, and her hand was caressing the trail of his hair down his chest to the home of curls, where she raked her fingers, and then further down, her small hand pressing around his cock, and he growled, bucking into her hand, trying to keep himself in control, but her tantalizing slide was making—him—

“Daenerys,” he growled at her, rolling her under him, and panting above her, before kissing her deeply. Her hand was trapped between their legs, still round his sex, and she held it to her thigh, rubbing it gently there, enjoying his eyes going wild and dark above her, regarding her with such a feral look. The muscles deep inside her belly were contracting in excited anticipation, turned on by his desire, lit up at being the recipient of this gaze full of fire, and by the jolts of pleasure their outer stroking ignited on her inner lips.

Then he kneeled, throwing the eiderdown away, and took her legs, and hoisted them up over his shoulders, his cock sliding through the ring of her fingers to reach her folds, _now_ , drumming a low r that reverberated through her, as he hit her deep, and deeper still when his hands went to secure her hips, and moving in her to the very last. Her every nerve felt stimulated; there was something in imagining him moving in her, feeling him in her hand when he went out before pushing back in, and opening her eyes to find him there in truth. It was real then, this shattering in craving to better build up again.

Her blood was drunk on him, it felt flushed—her breath was collapsing under desire, who knew, who knew that breathing was in fact meant to channel her desire, to let pleasure build and burst from broken down voice? Everything but the very centre of her pleasure faded away, and she floated. She could only feel bursts of elated piercing felicity and yet it felt she could feel all. All words disappeared, and yet they didn’t feel gone; it felt like she had, at last, gone to the very essence, the very marrow of words, to the apotheosis of the soul.

It was like a thud prolonging itself indefinitely, the last pounding of her orgasm, a thud that couldn’t cease and couldn’t become another one, straining against a release she couldn’t feel the end of, stretching itself forever and ever and ever after, a last word left without a full stop for the world to resume anew.

There in this thin place outside of time, they would have love everlasting.

She cuddled into Jorah, who grabbed at the eiderdown to tuck them both in; he was so warm. She could find herself cooling off quickly, after their lovemaking, and she needed to snuggle into him for more warmth. He held her, close, crooning to her, and she hummed to him, wriggling into his chest to find the most comfortable position to sleep in.

Usually, she had trouble sleeping at a new place; the sounds were all strange and unfamiliar. But here, there was only the music of the snow outside, falling silently, watching over them; and the soft streaming of Jorah’s breath running against her skin; and a blanket of safeness that was warmer than all the beds in the world. And, slowly, so very slowly, everything faded away but that loving heat, and Daenerys fell asleep.

When next she woke, it was dark, and she would have felt frightened but for Jorah’s bulk nesting into her. “Are you asleep?” she whispered; she waited; but he didn’t answer. She didn’t know if she would have preferred him to or not. “Because if you weren’t,” she said, her breath ruffling his skin in her stead, “I would kiss you there,” she kissed his shoulder, “and there,” and his neck, “and there,” his jaw.

But when she made to rise, he grabbed her to nuzzle her neck. “Don’t go,” he pleaded, his voice muffled in sleep. So he had been awake! She moved her rear, slowly, against his waking cock. “You would hold a Queen to your bed, o Knight of Winter?” she admonished, her voice husky from earlier moans and cries to come.

“I would,” he answered, claiming her lips to his and her bosom to her hands, and her love to his love, one more time and one time more.

*

When Daenerys opened her eyes in the morning, the sky was a comforting shade of grey; a tranquil nest full of fluff. It was a grey made for warm tea on lazy days.

She tiptoed out of bed, twirling round in her joy, looking at Jorah peaceful in his slumber, and darted back to kiss his hair very lightly so he wouldn’t wake. She gleefully glided to the shelves that she had neglected the night before, and passed her fingers over her books—hers, there just in front of his bed!

A thick volume, red bound, called her eyes. She picked it up; it was Jorah’s thesis! She looked at him; he was sleeping so quietly. She’d have time to make him tea and perhaps even breakfast, if she could find her way to the kitchen!

She made the road back to the living room wrapped in her white throw—the house was chilling in the morning. She took up her disregarded clothes, dressed, and picked her phone from the floor. There was a message from Missandei!

The grey outside brewed as Daenerys read. Missandei apologized for the short notice and asked if she could cut her vacation short because a class had booked her just before their Christmas break. The email had attached tickets, with the ferry leaving just under two hours and a plane later that day.

The world stilled.

Daenerys looked at the thesis in her hands and opened it in a daze. If she had opened the page before or the page after, perhaps she could have kept her panic attack at bay. But she opened this one; and through the convoluted words of a quote he had put there, right at the very centre of the page, she saw clearly that love was only a construct, and that Jorah himself couldn’t believe it would last. When she looked up, the sky was sinister, poisonous clouds oozing dark into drab. Bubbles were meant to burst, and dreams meant to die; and love doomed to decay.

It was written. It was known.

Suddenly, the enormity of what she was living hit her.

What was she _doing_?

Their bubble had no chance of enduring in the real world. Her friends didn’t even understand _her_ , how could they understand what she had with Jorah?

If Jorah had been there, he would have soothed her, and heard the scared quavering in her thoughts; and he would have said, his voice still, _what you didn’t have the courage to face for you alone, you can do for us_.

But Jorah wasn’t there. He was miles away, in sleep, and he could not reach her.

How could they thrive in the world? They were outworldly, they weren’t meant for it.

She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t stay in a dream, cut from her friends, cut for everyone and everything she knew. She prickled in alarm. Fears gnawed at her, fears to be trapped, fears to be tricked.

And left alone.

Why did she have to be the one to leave? Why did she have to be the one having to stay? Who would she have left when he left her, if he cut her from everything she knew?

If Jorah had been there, he would have calmed her, reminded her to listen to herself and not the voices of ill advisors.

And what, he would have her listen to him, and only him?

There was no happy end outside of fairy tales, because there was no end in fairy tales.

No true end.

Time stopped and all slowed down to a freeze—and there came a suspended moment, going on forever. Happily ever after; outside of time.

Daenerys should have woken Jorah up, and promised to come back, to write, or arranged for him to come and visit her, but she didn’t. She was lost to terror.

She tore a page from her notebook and explained that she had to leave for work. “I loved to dream with you. I wish…”

But she never finished writing her sentence, because her phone rang; it was Missandei, asking if she could make it or if they should reschedule. Daenerys didn’t hear what she herself answered.

She left the Keep, and poems wept at her feet: to where the winds know, broken and brief, to and fro, as the winds blow—a dead leaf.

*

“DAENERYS!” Jorah shouted, running into the sea, his arms reaching for the ferry. “DAENERYS!”

He wanted to freeze the sea to stop her, to freeze his heart—his broken heart.

He was slammed and plummeted by the ocean, and he roared and roared and roared: he wanted it to pulsate and rage as he did.

 _If I look back I am lost_ , she thought, but she did look back, and she saw him, crossing the sea, looking for a moment like Neptune marching to her, making stallions out of the rage of foam. And then he swam, and her heart broke. He was only human, her Golden Knight, her Knight of Winter, and there he was, straining against reality, trying to defeat an army of waves to get to her—only it wasn’t the waves, it was the living who would come between them, who would dull their magic and force reality between them! _Go back_ , she pleaded—to him or her? She didn’t know—, but there was no going out. She was ripping her heart out, because she was a coward.

“Be with me always!” roared Jorah, for only Heathcliff, in this moment, could find his way through his mind. But the waves were too high, high and relentless, and the ferry too far—if it had been a dinghy, if he had been stronger! If only he had been enough. But he wasn’t. He had served her and now she didn’t need him. He wasn’t enough to keep her at his side—she had loved him only as long a dream. And the reality of him hadn’t been enough. He wasn’t—a wave towered into him, chocking him out of his lungs. “Take any form,” he said quietly, not hearing his voice above the rage of the ocean, not knowing the way to shore, “drive me mad—Daenerys,” and he couldn’t feel the tears on his cheeks because he was drowning in them; in the tears all lovers cried when the fairy tale fluttered too close to reality, and was eaten.

He was rolled up in the mouth of the sea, teeth of ice munching at him, the drool of the sea digesting him before he was gobbled down. “Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you,” he said, for there was no words he could think up on his own.

“I cannot live without my soul,” was Jorah’s last thought before a plank of wood knocked the wind out of his throat, and the ocean swallowed him.

*

In her empty flat, in her empty city, in her empty world, Daenerys stared at the only photo of Jorah she’d been able to find on the university’s website, and her cheeks hurt, and her eyes swam, and suddenly there were tears, rolling down her cheeks, and there was a pressure in her head—at seeing someone who brought her so much comfort bring her so much pain, because he was just a picture. He was smiling, not at her, and not here. She was all alone on the very last floor of her building, cut from everything in her tower of gloom.

She imagined his arms around her, shushing her—but he was not there.

Because she had left.

And her tears ceased to flow, she felt her heart beat between her eyes, while down in her chest it seemed not to move at all, or only to choke her lungs in sorrow. Her nose clogged, she couldn’t breathe, and there was only silence, and that pounding hurt, hurt enduring when all tears were gone.

She couldn’t extract him from her life now that she had shared all of it with him. Now that she saw him in everything that she cherished, now that he lived in her secret place of dreams, which she had not shared with anyone. And she had shared it with him because when she had thought she was done with the real world, when she had thought the time for playing had been left down the years, he had been there.

She had thought she could only be free in her head, and her books, and a realm turned away from them.

But she had been living; she had! It hadn’t been a dream, after all—it had been real!

She didn’t need to hide. But she had done so anyway, because she had been too afraid to be happy. This was all on her.

She had burned down her own heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "For him I sing / As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past / With time and space I him dilate—and fuse the immortal laws to make himself, by them, the law unto himself" Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass  
> "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea (etc.)", Charles Dickens (1812-1870), A Christmas Carol  
> "his lovely Loreley" The Lorelei is a rock on the river Rhine in Germany which inspired many folklore tales. Jorah is thinking here of the lady Lorelei from "La Loreley", a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918). In this version, La Loreley's lover left for a faraway land, and seeing her beauty makes every person die. She dies seeing her own reflection (with "her hair like the sun") in the Rhine.  
> "And I go / Where the winds know, / Broken and brief, / To and fro, / As the winds blow / A dead leaf." Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), Autumn Song (translated by R.T. Smith)  
> "Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!" Emily Brontë (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights. The character Heathcliff is saying these words in the novel.


	4. An Offering to Spring (December 25)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Jorah and Daenerys will quote from Roland Barthes, Jacques Prévert and Walt Whitman.

It was the first stroke of midnight and Daenerys was not in bed.

She was not sitting cross-legged looking up at her tree with a gleam in her eyes and glitters in her joy; she was not eagerly devouring a feast meant for a dozen, nor rereading her favourite picture books of old cuddled in her softest blanket, or even listening to music that called a beautiful star into life.

She sat with an empty heart, hollow gifts and a soulless tree.

It was a night in which no hope shone.

A night without magic.

“I’m not doing nothing again,” she thought to herself; had she written this all these years ago to advise herself down time? Her decision was made. She would buy plane tickets, and before New Year Eve she would be back in Bear Island, begging Jorah to forgive her before the year could turn. If he gave her another chance!... Then she would move to the island, with him, and write there, and maybe sometimes he could come to King’s Landing—when she had to meet with people there—and she’d show him her special places and her beloved library and her tearoom.

But it was a barren daydream.

Nothing could grow on wingless belief.

How strange to think that her brain had rearranged itself so that Jorah had a home there.

How strange to think she had held a bag full of fairy dust, and had thrown it all away.

The clock stroked twelve.

And from out of Christmas night came a faraway song; a song of brass and bells and twirls of snowflakes gathering en masse from down on Earth; to swirl round and round and round and show the way up, to dreams! Daenerys raised her head to follow the source of the faint hope whirling so; and she saw, from out of her empty fireplace, fly out a paper plane, propelled by the teensiest motor. It landed in her open hands, and the tiny hum of the engine went to sleep, soothed by her touch.

Daenerys stared and stared at her plane, her heart trembling too much to open it; her hands petrified on its wings. Could she believe, then?

She transformed the plane in a sheet of paper; a sheet she now recognized, out of its spell.

It was a page torn out in haste from a notebook.

It was a page that read, in loops made wobbly by despair: “I loved to dream with you. I wish…”

Her eyes were filling with tears; and she saw all in a daze—all in a shimmering chimaera, all her world in a glistening veil of hope, hope made truth, truth made dream. Daenerys was not used to dream in reality; but she had not trained her ears to aloofness: she had not! And so, when she heard a thud, in her chimney, her stare came to a stop on the hearth, holding a piece of paper for her—tied with a string to a stone painted blue. She gathered it, gingerly, and there on the stone was drawn a dandelion, starkly yellow against the blue of the stone, with a single silver seed flying away.

She unfolded the paper.

“Are you wishing upon a Knight, o Queen?” the note read. “If you are—put the moon back into the sky, for I need a ladder to step down the North Star.”

Her heart trembled more than her hands. She fumbled with her phone to turn on her flashlight, then thought that it wouldn’t do, it wasn’t romantic enough, but she needed to be quick—he was waiting… Waiting! Waiting there on her roof! She gathered candles, scented candles of Winter that she had never lighted together, seven of them, and put them all in the fireplace. Their lights flickered up… but could he see them? Was it bright enough to reach him? Oh, if only he could see the beacon of her joy!

She was about to add another lamp when another message dropped in her fireplace. And this one read: “I love you. I will always love you.” It was a blow of happiness; she felt dizzy from it—and before she could recover, before she could even breathe, she could see a sledge—her sledge!—lowered down to her tiny balcony. And then, she saw a pair of boots, and the shadow of a long coat too warm for King’s Landing, for in King’s Landing it was never cold, never, and then she saw—Jorah.

Jorah.

Jorah, just outside of her window; with his curls tangled and his beard even scruffier than it had been and a red scar upon his neck—he had been hurt, how, when, had it been in the ocean?, and her brain said “Oh, Jorah!” but her mouth didn’t; her voice had been lost in her elation and worry.

She floated to the French window and put her hand on the glass, looking at him, and he bowed his head, turned off the radio fixed on the sledge, and, so very slowly, put his hand over hers on the other side of the glass.

She threw the window open, and he looked down at her, with a glance so soft, it was all of Winter cradling the shivering plants in a gentle cot of snow, so the buds may live until Spring. 

“I return to your service, my Queen,” he said, his head down and his eyes darting up. “If you’ll have me.”

“Oh, Jorah!” she exclaimed again, though this time her brain said nothing at all and her mouth moved on its own, saying it, in such hope, such wonder as her mouth rounded to form the Oh! of his name, such bliss as she opened her mouth and stayed transfixed at the ah!

“Merry Christmas,” he said in a tilting voice, like a question. And when she didn’t move, he began to say “Daenerys, I’m sorry,” but he was cut short—she had leapt into his arms, meeting him at the border between her flat and her balcony, and was trying to catch his lips.

“Daenerys, wait—” he tried, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t, and her cold lips on his neck, chin, it was burning—him, it was—“Wait,” he begged again, trying in vain to harden his heart.

“I do not do _wait_ ,” she said, looking steelily at him. And he fell in love with her, once more, at her regal tone of voice, at the hope in her eyes melting the iron. She brought him to his knees, this woman who had made him wait, who had left him, and he—

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry I left,” and her eyes, suddenly, were bright with tears.

“Don’t cry, now, my perfect Queen,” he said, daring to swipe fallen tears away.

“But I’m not,” Daenerys cried on, “I’m not perfect! And that’s—when you realize I’m not, you… You wrote about ‘ _the alteration of the image’_ , you did, in your thesis; and when it happens, you will feel ashamed of me.”

Jorah narrowed his eyes. “Is _that_ what you were reading before you left?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes! And one day, you’ll turn and see me _corrupted_ , it’s doomed to be so. You quoted Barthes on it, it’s the word he used—corruption,” she confirmed in her despair.

He advanced on her, pushing her back into her flat, stepping over the threshold, his nostrils flaring, though his voice was very quiet. “Do you mean to say, my love, that the reason you’d have banished yourself from my life was that a French semiotician could not find happiness?”

“Time will happen, _something_ will happen, that is what you teach your students, I’ve _read_ it, and—”

“I teach them _he_ wrote this. I teach them,” and his voice switched suddenly; it came from deeper down his throat, it expanded across the room to reach the students at the very back of the auditorium, and she could see herself there; his shoulders went back, he stood taller, and she saw him projecting such charisma, such buoyance, she felt envious of these students. And yet—there was a slight smile there at the corner of his lips, in the lines of his eyes, telling her he was _playing_ for her benefit, and something in the combination of it all made her feel weak. “Abrupt production, within the amorous field, of a counter-image of the loved object. According to minor incidents or tenuous features, the subject suddenly sees the good Image alter and capsize.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “That’s what I read. Though it does sound better when you say it.”

Jorah rolled his eyes at the compliment and smiled to becalm her fears. “But the essay is about one who drowns in thoughts unsaid to their lover who stays forever silent. On the very next page, I demolish the notion that this kind of relationship has anything to do with love. Oh, _you_ would love it, Daenerys,” he added, a boyish glee catching the crinkles of his eyes; a draught of her laugh would have been enough to make a proud smile flare. “I’m sure you would, reading all about great masters being toppled down their pedestals.”

He peered inquisitively at Daenerys and saw that she was convinced, almost, but still on precarious grounds. “I see you,” Jorah said, leaning towards her to look at her eyes. “I see _you_. I see you when you are _so_ impatient, my love—when you tug and burst and pull and won’t wait a moment for your bidding. I see you when you want us all to bend the knee to you, because you are right, are you not? And you damn well mean to bulldoze us into your opinion.”

She felt exposed, she felt _pierced_ —pinned down, seen at the bones. How could he expose this all, how? With his mouth softened into fondness, his eyes smiling, full of love and wonder.

“I see you when you are hurt and you lash out to protect your lovely soft heart. I see you when people go too far and you’d burn them all to toast. Oh how harsh you can be, sometimes… I see how you love power, how you are so good at it, how you like exercising it, and how sometimes, you fear this makes you evil and you ask yourself if you should diminish yourself. I see you when you stop chaining yourself down and spread your wings as far as they can reach. All this I see, all this I love—oh I see when you tug on my heart, when you’d tear me out on decisions that wouldn’t be mine, out on paths I’ve never stopped before. You are not an object, you are not an image—I love you, do you see? There is no _abrupt production of a counter-image_ that could alter you because, because—I want to grow around you. I cherish the paths you walk on. You’re not frozen in a picture, you’re not stuck in a first impression, because I love _you_. Not your image. Throw anything at me, anything—and if it’s yours, my love, then my heart will embrace it, caress it, _love_ it.” His hand came to rest upon her face, tenderly, and his voice whipped out furiously: “ _Damn_ Roland Barthes.”

“Oh, Jorah,” Daenerys smirked at him, “I love when you’re blasphemous.”

“Well go on then, my darling,” he growled, “is there another author you want me to slay in your name? Name them, name them all, I will—”

She kissed him.

And it felt like magic reborn.

“But all of this means that I’m not perfect, am I?” she couldn’t resist asking, smiling against his mouth, brushing her cheek to his beard, enjoying the days that had made his gruff softer. Soft beard sweet mouth. “Do you want me to take out the dictionary? Do you want me to—” he snarled, and she silenced him again, her lips on his words.

And yet there was still a knot of fear she couldn’t hide away. She stepped back, to close the French window, looking fondly at the sledge, and thinking of the time he would tell her how he had climbed her building to the roof!, and she fussed with her hair, with the curtains, before turning back to him.

Still she could not speak, and she settled on her small couch, beckoning Jorah to join her, which he did, removing his coat and draping it over the armrest before settling near her to unlace his boots. He was such a warm heating pad at her side that, finally, she could voice the truth of her fears. “I am afraid, I—happiness really is not meant to last forever, is it? Jorah?”

“I’m afraid too,” he admitted softly. “I’m afraid of the years between us, breaking us apart… I’m afraid of time, laughing at us. But I can’t stop wanting you…” And indeed his eyes were predatory, seeking hers, and he seized her lips again, he kissed her as if he meant to battle time—and so did she.

“And I can’t stop… loving you. I’m scared, because—” he cuddled into her, his lips seeking her neck, his shoulders rippling under her hands. He breathed in, in the breath she knew; she knew he would quote something; and her heart burst at the fact that she knew this in him, and this pushed forward the tears she had tried to keep uncried.

“We lived together, the two of us,” Jorah enunciated slowly, his voice pained—more pained than he felt himself, carrying the pain of the poet in his words; or did the poet allow him to show this pain he would have kept under wraps? “you who loved me,” and here his voice lilted up, a tiny dash of sun, of light, in a November day, piercing at the gloom, “and I who loved you,” he growled achingly, and then he breathed, the sharp intake of pain part of the recitation, part of the performance channelling, through poetry, all that could not be said in daylife words. “But life drives apart those who love,” he said, his voice disappearing in a whisper—a whisper that cut through Daenerys’ heart, and she mouthed along with him the next words he delivered as gently at their meaning, “ever so softly,” and incredibly his voice twisted what was silence spoken, “without a noise,” and he paused, elongated the words with the absence of further sound.

And from out of the respite his voice rose, like a wave, a soft wave washing ashore, without violence, in an afterthought, a normal wave of time that came to pass without anyone realising it did, except the grains of seconds covered by tears of salt: “and the sea erases from the sand, the step of lovers gone their way.”

There was silence.

In their silence was the foreseen mourning of the mornings that one day would not dawn.

And then Daenerys set her jaw, jutted her eyebrows, uncoiled her back, and she seemed the empress of the world.

“But _not today_ ,” she declared. “I am Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Seven Kingdoms, the Unburnt-out, and the maker of spaces. I make worlds. I dream and my dreams exist in millions of people. I am your _Queen_. And no one, not Time themself, no one, will make me forget you, not _ever_. I will wear time out,” she said through clenched teeth. “I will make time bend the knee, see if I won’t!”

Jorah nodded, in awe. “That you will, my love,” he answered her, tears in his eyes.

“I command to time,” Daenerys proclaimed, and such was her confidence that he believed her—he always believed her, he would have followed her to the end of her dreams.

“I have stories to time travel! Whatever form they take, on film or boards or pages,” she professed. “I have music to yield time to our whims! And to withstand its passing, I have painting and architecture and sculpture—I have them all!” He could see it, in her passion, the holds time could not storm away.

“And I have love, to make a second spent in your eyes last forever, Jorah. And when you die—or I die—it will be an ocean of black ink drowning me, but that ink will write our story!” She blinked back tears, but didn’t drop her gaze. “Because I love you down to your soul, Jorah, do you hear?”

He raised a shy glance to her. “Say that again, Daenerys?” he dared ask for a single wish.

“I love you,” she said, so very seriously he would have laughed had his heart not felt so constrained. But he just… needed… to hear it.

“Say it once more?” he pleaded.

“I love you, Jorah,” Daenerys said softly, “I love you, my darling Knight.” And her eyes were heartbreakingly fond as they gazed upon him like he was the most precious thing in the world. “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” he said, outraged, and he would have gone on, but she smiled at him with an impish gleam in her eyes, offering her cleavage to his defenceless gaze.

“Then why,” she asked sweetly, “are you making me wait?” He was still frozen into place and she had to smile at the way he would not believe he was free to lavish his love upon her. “I told you earlier, I do not _do_ wait, Ser Jorah,” she repeated regally, her hands passing under his shirt, “pleasure me, now, I tell you! Or would you disobey—”

But Daenerys was cut short, because Jorah rose from the couch, his curls brushing over his skin as he straightened up, her order giving him permission to move. How tall he was in such a tiny nest! He stood before her, his chest broad, one part of his face in darkness, and he shifted slightly to an otherly figure; he draped himself in the veil of a gothic novel, and her heart beat madly.

He made every story possible. He was imagination made real.

“Disobey, my Lady?” Jorah’s voice was trickling dark, filling the flat and stroking the fire. “ _You_ owe a dance to the Knight of Winter.”

She raised demurely her eyes to him. “Is that so, my Lord and Liege? And yet here you stand… a long, long way from Bluebell Wood.” She stood up, slowly, her limbs unfolding themselves before his eyes, blooming into a temptress, a fay—a faerie queen, walking to him, chaining his eyes to her.

She stopped just before him. “One would almost think… you have no power here.” And her hands grazed his stomach and moved up to his heart, where it rested, her thumb mocking his nipple as she surveyed him. “Is this not mine?” she asked, making the drums there pulse wildly. “Did you not give it to me to pay your passage through the balcony to my realm?”

“No, my Queen,” said Jorah slowly, “you owe me _this_ ,” he said, his large hand covering her heart, “to pay your debt; you have taken my heart to pay your fare out of an island, ‘tis is fair. But now… I have come to claim my due. The hour is late… you delayed payment and now your time is _up_.”

He gathered her to him, flesh on flesh to him, his arms locking her. She rocked herself against him, cooing into his neck, her hips grinding against his. How very much like a faerie king he looked, demanding and bewitching! And she knew she could have a gentle knight at the merest click of her fingers; and so she felt safe abandoning herself to the Knight of Winter’s power.

“Did you think yourself out of the Woods?” he whispered, and there! His whisper lifted her arms up, and she spun, bare feet in the clearing made by the Knight of Winter’s arms.

She twirled, her feet trailing lightly, and she smiled, her lips leading him to her; and her smile snared his hand, his thumb trying to caress all its curve before it went away; and on the trail of his hand her smile blossomed and sparkled and flared in flames of laugh; and on this laugh burned the heart of the Knight of Winter.

If she had to be caught, she’d make him wait a dance for a kiss; but her hand she let him claim, and the round of her spins she let him trace, and in the home of his warmth she let him envelop her at the end of a swirl.

They danced, they danced the flower waltz, they danced on flowers, they danced flowers into life. Their feet were light and aflight; bluebells bloomed under their steps in bells and strings; a sea of bluebells blossomed, upstream of the lake—a sea for a fabled salmon wished and storied. They didn’t see them; their eyes were for each other. But they felt the softness of tender moss under their soles; they heard the chirp of bluebells ringing as the dew from eternal dawn shook itself free; they saw the purple-blue reflection of the flowers at the corner of their lover’s eyes. And though it is dangerous to dance, dangerous to twirl in the realm of fairies, dangerous to trust in believing, trust they did; and their faith held fairy ground true, under their feet and around their hearts.

One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, round and round and round they danced—in each other’s arms they danced, all life, they danced round the steps of ever. Round and round they danced until, was it a slip, was it a dash?—they made one lone bluebell ring; it rang the ghost note of four, and music changed; and music changed time, for what is music but the only time we can hear?

Music is more than we know; it is time itself, if it’s played right; and some notes are not to be heard, hidden at the very heart of music, where they can only be felt.

Such rang the ghost note that changed their path. “Kiss me… I want to feel your lips, on my neck,” Daenerys asked, and he complied. Her veins throbbed at the caress of his breath; then she felt his mouth, nuzzling her skin, before it closed into a kiss, before his tongue traced her pulse down the curve of her neck.

“You don’t have to move to Bear Island,” Jorah panted, “I’ll come to King’s Landing, I—”

“I want to, I don’t care, we can split time, I can write on the Island, we can… Home is where you are,” she told him, seizing the curls at the back of his head to fix his eyes on her, so he would see she was in earnest.

Her blood was fizzling in double sharps stumbling across each other in their haste to play their part and bring her pulse closer to him.

“But what will people think, Daenerys, what will—”

“I don’t care!” she told him. And now that she had lived the alternative, a life without him, she knew she could face her fears and all the fears. “When we are in company, if we are not free to speak, then we’ll do without words. We’ll understand each other with looks—”

“You’ll raise an eyebrow at me and I’ll understand what you’re laughing about—”

“And they will catch our looks and wonder what they mean!”

“And we will know, won’t we, my love?”

“That’s what we’ll do, Jorah, if ever we can’t talk, we’ll talk anyway!”

Time was dissolving in a tempo bent on driving Jorah mad. His beat was flowing so quickly it burned through patterns; his desire beat and beat and it seemed there would be no weak beat at all; beat-beat-beat and the accent went up, and up, and up, and how long could this mad music spin him round? He needed her. He needed her _now_. And she hadn’t lied, she could read him, read his eyes, because she tugged him down, to kiss him, kiss him deep; and her tongue on his tongue, it made him yearn for his hands on her skin, it made him yearn for more and more and more, for her caress was softening his mind to mush, was hardening his heartbeats to a crave, was swirling lust and crazes of hankering drive. He needed her, now now now, and she was taking off her huge woollen jumper, two sizes bigger than she was, and underneath, she was in a gauzy nightgown that had been made for the Moon, surely, by the Sun, when they were lovers forever near, forever apart, and the Sun wanted to gaze at his love through his beams.

He could see through it, almost, he could see through it as if she was masked from a cloak of moon glow; and the dark rose of her breasts, he could guess at it, there was a hint of it! The cloth was so airy, her nipples lifted it, just a breath, and he wanted to make them rise too, and fly her nightgown away, as the sun lifted night away! He could see the outline of her body through it, he could guess the volume of her curls, he could almost see the whisper of them, at the crux of her thighs!

Jorah had too many clothes, always too many clothes, she had to divest him of them, but how! She fumbled with his flies, thinking fleetingly she could tease him, but she wanted him now, now, _now_ , and no boxer shorts came hampering her this time. He sprang free, to her hand, and she fought to not squeeze him at once, make him bend, make it plead in white beads of aching lust, so drunk was she on the raised pulses that strained his veins to her hands, that twitched him in her hands, and she could not wait.

She would not wait!

Daenerys locked her arms around his neck and, stepping on her tip toes, she pressed him down, and what did she mean, she couldn’t mean—but she was! But though he bent his knees, she was still too short to wolf his sex whole in hers—he lifted her up and she grinned at him, teasing her knee to his cock before wrapping her leg around his waist and extending the other down. She looked just like a ballet dancer, like this, suspended in flight, and he smiled too, how could he help it, how?

She kept one arm round his shoulders and reached down to follow the vein of his cock with a finger, making his blood sing deliriously, and guide him all the way up her folds. He stumbled on words, he stumbled on steps, but she took him, she took him whole—her inner lips were pounding in effervescent need, spasms calling for him and trickling down to entice him home.

Her flesh all around him, it felt like he was swallowed by a dance, he felt at the heart of heart of a swirl; he would faint, she would sear him in pleasure right down to his brain, how could he even move, he felt like dissolving in strings of rhythm—he couldn’t control any measure of compound.

She moved slowly over him, pressing on his shoulders to dance. He gripped at her hips, moving her too—his eyes! His eyes were so dark, lost to the core of her; they moved in a rhythm she could perceive but didn’t need to anticipate. She trusted him to that; to let her dream outside even of herself, beyond the safety net she had secured her brain in.

Still Jorah wouldn’t surrender! And she squeezed her walls on him, and he growled, shuddered, and she could feel his cock becoming rod-hard, hard like the membrane of a drum so taut it dissolves upon music; and she could feel the reverberations of it pulse and throb, and at last Jorah came into her, and she could feel the oozing of that last note merging music to silence as it dies away; and the added warmth of him inside her—his surrender—pushed her to a last spring to capture the last notes, and make his apotheosis hers.

And as they twirled in silence, their smiles the only music left, it snowed in King’s Landing. It snowed on the carpet of bluebells, it snowed across the stars, it snowed silence soft, it snowed a snowflake for each note played, one ice crystal for one quaver, one gem for a crotchet, one ornament for a minim, one snowflake for one arpeggio—it snowed scales for a tempest made concerto.

Jorah lowered Daenerys down and her toes touched the ground, though she was still trembling, and he was too; his muscles and his eyes both. Daenerys stroke his brows, her caress the kiss of snow, and she raised herself back on tip toes to kiss his eyelids. It almost brought him to tears, for all the love he could see in her eyes. She loved him, then! She did, he had been right to butt through his fears and run after her, to save her, because she wouldn’t have left with a wish left unsaid, if she hadn’t left to fight demons all alone!

And he had been right to beg her address from Maege’s. He had been so scared his aunt would behead him when he came to her so soon after she had saved him from drowning or freezing in the ocean. “You’d have been dead in one to three hours if I hadn’t kept an eye on you and fish you out immediately!” she had scolded him, and he had felt like a small child again, just like when there’d been only her. She had refused, at first, to breach Daenerys’ trust and give him the map to her home; but he had told her that he would dismantle King’s Landing brick by brick; he had told her Daenerys loved him forever and had left, and that it could only be the second turning point in a storyline, when all is lost, and she, Maege, didn’t want to be an antagonist, did she, she had to be a guardian, and Maege had rolled her eyes, gave him the address, and warned him she’d chuck him back to the sea herself if he ever made Daenerys uncomfortable.

They were on the same page, Daenerys and him, reading and writing their story as one. And he trusted her to derail him; and he knew, now, that she trusted him to disrupt the outline of her life.

He brushed her cheeks, delighting in the way his trace made a blush bloom upon her skin; he would paint her ghostly red, he would paint her gone in sky, he would paint her elated and spent.

“Come,” she said, and she led him to her bed. It was a double bed, but so much smaller than his own, would he dare to?… Could he presume to besmirch her bed? She had two bedside tables, both with a lamp and piles of books; the three books he had given her about Bear Island were there, within arm’s reach! There was a bottle of perfume, too—how would it feel to lower himself into her bed, enveloped in her scent?

She knelt on her mattress and beckoned him over, undressing him, arcing her wrist, her touch blending with him, tracing patterns upon his skin. Her hands were cool against his burning skin, and he wanted to gather her in his arms and squeeze her warm, protect her, build a home of covers around her that would let no cold pass, ever.

Daenerys tugged his pants down, and waited for him to step out of them, eying him brazenly. She wanted to capture something of it, save it to a canvas in oil so thick it would lure viewers to follow the trail of its tints to the very end of colour.

Jorah leaned down to kiss her, and under his lips she offered herself. She opened the cage of her shoulders, her breasts rose towards him. Her nipples traced shivers on his chest; wrote goosebumps on her arms. Why would they be so sensitive with him—because she loved him and felt any action from him through her being whole?

Kissing him felt like winter defeated; so warm and safe and fiery. She stepped home and went straight into the raging fire, always safe; always safe!

She cupped his testicles very gently, drinking his hiss and leaning into him and he gravitated closer to her. Daenerys tried to make her touch as delicate as if she were trying to carry a whole snowflake home, without hurting it, igniting a flame behind it that would not make it melt, but make it harden to sparkling diamond.

Jorah rumbled and, finally, let himself be guided to her bed. They lay side by side, facing each other, and her heart hammered madly; it was surreal that he would be there, in her bed, such a long way from Bear Island and yet magical still. Was there nothing to fear, then? Could she have him in truth, in her life, and he would not reveal himself papery thin, and she would not reveal herself to be dissolving in the last page?

She passed a leg over his thigh, to snuggle closer to him. He must have read something of her lingering fear in her eyes, because he asked: “My darling, you know how I love you more and more?” And when she smiled, he went on: “Well… in the same way… you’ll start your next peak at higher ground… and higher… and higher…”

“One day I won’t come back from this, Jorah,” she answered, out of breath, overcome, her folds defeated, begging his fingers on each fluttery pulse. “You won’t be lost alone, my love, I’ll follow you—I will always follow you,” he pledged.

She took his hand and caressed herself with his fingers, getting high on his unruly breaths, his hand under her control. He was sideways from her—not quite at her side—his cock resting violently on her hip, trembling and twitching. She quivered under their hands, almost letting go. She grabbed his cock and brushed it on her lips, tapping the head lightly against her clitoris, painting it in the white of his drops.

Her folds sang their need, his skin tightened in desire sought her flesh, to be surrounded and squeezed in her love. And moving, moving, moving, it felt, it felt, it felt, like colours merging together—making a radiant view, a colour born anew, a grand fusing of hues into delight made true. There was no chasm between their bodies and souls.

After their return from impressionist shores, they cuddled, and talked, and Daenerys tried to kiss Jorah’s scar away. She gasped at his retelling of the plank of wood that would have deprived her, had it beheaded her Knight—she promised she would make it a villain in a story. The ocean would be under Qotho’s thumb, she explained to Jorah, an olden witch-king who’d their heart cursed to never have, and never be, and never love; and the plank of wood would be an arakh, which were the enchanted sharks of the sea.

Jorah hummed under her words, spellbound, lost in Daenerys’ stories and her ardent voice, and the depth of her love for him; and in her fingers, clutching at him, trembling at the thought he could have been lost.

“I will never abandon you,” he promised softly.

“I won’t either,” she vowed. “I need you by my side.” She rose, and poked his stomach, grinning: “Sit up! I want to hug you!” and he could only tilt his head for her, and smile softly at her, and oblige. She climbed into his lap, gorging her eyes on his face and the soft wrinkles of fondness upon his skin, in which love for her flowed.

Then she did hug him, indeed, wrapping her legs around his back—wrapping her arms round his shoulders, listening to his chest beat against her ear. She could feel him rising—his cock and his breath both. And under her spine her nerves trickled in anticipation, straining to walk through a scene of love they both knew by heart and yet would rediscover anew.

“Is this the last invocation?” she asked on his skin. And though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he was smiling by the ring of his silence, by the shifting of his shoulders, underlining his unseen smile.

“At the last,” he declaimed smoothly, slyly, his hips moving softly skyward to hers—and she moaned on the sibilant sound of his voice grinding on her desire. Her flesh was sore, just a bit, and yet it was yearning to take him again, and make him hers once more. She teased her wetting lips to his cock, slowly, moving on the syllables of Whitman’s “tenderly”.

“From the walls of the powerful,” Jorah quoted on between kisses on her throat, “fortress’d house,” he said breathlessly, “from the clasp of the knitted locks,” and he kissed all her bosom, he kissed her breath and wit away, “from the keep of the well-closed doors,” and surely her door was not well-closed now, she could feel it pulsing open and open more and begging him to traipse beyond the threshold of her, “let me be wafted,” he begged, his eyes glazed in the next page of their script.

“Let me glide noiselessly forth,” he beseeched her, and she took hold of his manhood, taking hold of the poem too. “With the key of softness unlock the locks,” Daenerys said, and Jorah shuddered a breath out as he murmured “with a whisper, set ope the doors, o soul!”

“Tenderly”, teased Daenerys, slowly taking him again, excruciatingly slowly, “be not impatient,” she smirked, her own flesh belaying her order, thrumming around him. “Strong is your hold, o mortal flesh,” growled Jorah, “strong is your hold, o love!” and all the lines told, he dropped his glistening forehead to her breasts, kissing her, as she ground against his pelvis, letting her hands roam. Every touch, every trail of his hands on her skin fired her—his eyes looking at her drowned her heart.

And finally they could take it slow no more—this soliloquy had to soar to a spirited dialogue of fervent lines, it had to burn away, it had to move and dissolve into exuberant applause, it had to be the run to blazing rapture! And as they both declaimed their passion in speeches of love, the directions blurred into nothingness, as they climbed higher and higher; their lines a fulfilment of something between yearning and having—it was pleasure building from being away immediately pounded into having, until, finally, the curtain fell on the line that was last because it killed all words, and there was only bliss, and only silence, and only pounding hearts in unison.

Perhaps time passed; maybe it didn’t. But there came a time when Jorah moved from their embrace. “Daenerys?” he asked bashfully, “you wouldn’t… happen to have anything to eat, would you?” She surprised herself by how violently she reacted to his hopeful, almost boyish, glance; could this last forever, her heart being seized by how much she loved him?

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Yes, of course, I—” and Jorah could only admire her leaping out of bed and running to her small kitchen, the dimmed light casting her Venus dimples in orange-moon shadows. She hopped back to bed carrying a box, which she opened and pushed toward him.

He could see seven pieces of art in swirled up paper liners, starkly dark brown. “What are these?” he asked in wonder. Was he supposed to _eat_ these?

“Candied fruits,” explained Daenerys. “This one is a clementine, and here’s a plum, apricot, pear, melon, peach, and there’s another clementine because I love them best of all.”

“But how do I eat them?” Jorah asked. She chuckled, softly, and nudged his hand to the clementine. He picked it up—it was sticky, the fruit glazed in a thick coat of syrup. And on the paper pooled more of this; what delightful depravity was this? Drops of syrup got caught in his beard when he lifted the fruit to his mouth, and he could see Daenerys’ eyes laughing in merriment; oh he would eat boxes of these fruits if he could make her this happy!

He bit into the clementine—this was paradise. It was sugar melting into his mouth—a true fruit dipped in candy magic. And at the core, there, there was a nectar that had to be ichor, so divine was it when it coated his tongue. He closed his eyes, munching at the fruit, purring at the sweet ambrosia gorging his mouth.

“This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten,” he told her, his pupils dilated and his nostrils flaring just the tiniest bit. She stifled a giggle—he looked a bit crazed, his tongue licking at his teeth, his eyes darting at the box. “Take another one,” she urged him, and he did, closing his eyes and growling again, and his teeth, as he crushed the candy, squished at the fruit, an intimate sound that made her think of him, moving inside her, pushing her to the brink of ecstasy.

“No, seriously, Daenerys, isn’t it rather like a waterfall?” said Jorah in a rapid delivery that made him sound slightly drunk. “If you think of a waterfall of honey? You could make one on Bear Island, I think, with your stories, couldn’t you? It tastes like Summer, it does, doesn’t it? How do they make this? It has to come from Dorne—where did you find it?”

“Jorah,” she interrupted, high herself on his joy, “are you on a sugar rush?”

He huffed playfully at her, and licked the syrup from the two paper cups, then, darting a prodding look at her, he quickly took another candied fruit and closed his lips on it. “It’s so plump, it’s making love to me, it has to be condensed poetry into sugar—is this magic? Did you bring this from fairyland? This can’t be human, it’s making me, I feel like a werewolf colliding with the moon, I—”

She hugged him from behind. He loved being swallowed in the sea of her hair, to feel her hand spray over his stomach, playing with the hair there, and feel all her sighs upon the back of his neck. Yet his mind was running from himself, delirious in its quest for sugar, elated in the swirling of joy his craze seemed to evoke in Daenerys. “Maybe the moon is made of syrup like this, that is what the sea is called to—”

He felt her hands—her fingers—upon the head of his penis, in a circle that she stroked down, and he shuddered in her hand. “Would you like a bit of syrup there?” she purred, closing her hand in a fist around him. “I, Daenerys—” he growled helplessly—it was unfair that she would take him by surprise when he was distracted by her witchcrafted candies! “Eat another fruit, Jorah,” she ordered him, and he complied, lost both in his mind and his body, his mouth defeated by the sugar attack and his cock stroked up and down by her gentle-commanding hand, and his breathing turned heavy, his penis strumming.

Daenerys kissed his skin and it was kissing sunshine—warmth. He tasted of gold, his smell she drank. He smelled of fairy-tale winter, he smelled of fairy-tale sea and salt and perfect sun. Glint on him danced, shadows on his skin, light and shadow that danced under her mouth, under her tongue, his chest heaving, his navel quivering, his voice vibrating in unworded sounds. It made her powerful—it made her the Queen of the world. Of his world—and hers. There she had absolute power, because she had absolute trust in him, and she had nothing to hide. He couldn’t fault her because there was no shame he could find. He knew her. He saw her, through these hazy eyes lost to desire and found to her.

“I miss you,” she whined playfully, kissing the hollow of his neck, rubbing her nose in the copper-gold curls at the nape of his head, and she fed him another fruit, which he ate eagerly, licking the syrup from her fingers, from his lips, his beard.

“Surely our happily ever after is better than they get in fairy tales,” he panted, growling between breaths, his words stuck together in sugar. “You see, now, I know you shiver when I kiss you here, precisely here…” and he turned in her arms to kiss her throat, under her ear. “And when I suck on your pearl to seek your pleasure, you won’t fight me,” oh how rugged was his voice layered in syrup! And how fierce his eyes were, drunk on candied fruits, “you won’t pull away to keep your wits—oh you didn’t mean to—but now, you’ll snuggle to me, you’ll search it with me,” and his syrupy lips closed on her clitoris, his tongue pursuing more and more honey there. And her meeting him thrust to thrust, moaning under his kisses, made him higher even then these fairy candies—how abandoned she was, how trustful, how completely open to him she was! She let him read between every line, every word, every single footnote of her, he would explore and kiss madly and love to the very end of the world, and beyond, and more, always more, forevermore! He was so moved that he opposed no resistance when Daenerys pushed him to his back, narrowly avoiding the box with the two remaining fruits, and kneeled over him, tickling a finger to the very root of his shaft. She teased the top of his sack, which contracted rapidly, a stampede of feelings that had to burst through, and she, she—fed him the pear as she took the last fruit, slowly chewing as she lowered herself onto him.

It was longing stumbling upon hope, elation transcended by hunger. It was something that had to be felt; stories opened doors—and in reality, maybe some paths could be walked on. And they ran and ran and danced on the path, until they stumbled both over the edge of the world and fell fell fell in timeless flight.

Later, after, some time after time rehooked itself to their world, Daenerys felt the frisson as the hand of the clock brushed against her heart. “Will you be there when I wake up?” she said, snuggling into him.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We must decorate your Christmas tree, my darling.”

“And you’ll fix the silver star at the very top?” she asked, almost lost to sleep.

“Yes, I promise,” Jorah said, caressing her hair, getting lost in her mane and the softness of her hair.

“And we’ll bake a Christmas feast?” Daenerys went on, going through the list of the delights the future held, to ward off any evil ahead.

“Everything you want,” he smiled.

“And I will offer you my heart?” she said, trailing her hand above his.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Every day. And every day I will offer you mine.”

“And we’ll read in front of the fireplace?”

“Yes, Daenerys,” Jorah promised to her, trying to reassure her so she could completely relax into his arms.

“And we’ll kiss?”

“Aye, my love,” he drawled.

“Jorah?” she whispered.

“Daenerys,” he smiled back lovingly, caressing the soft curb of her cheek.

“I want you,” she confessed, snuggling closer to him, her lips seeking the dilated artery pulsing on his neck, her hand seeking down what was already up.

Jorah rumbled low in his throat; in the dimmed glow of her bedside lamp, she guessed his smile, feral and gleeful and slow, and she could only say “Oh!” when the anticipation of more and more and more and more exploded in a first spasm of wonder made flesh.

*

When Daenerys woke, it was Christmas day, and she could feel the smell of the pomanders she had made without heart. Jorah was here and he opened her senses, to joy, to wonder—to the smell of oranges studded with cloves. He was life’s proof that magic could bloom at the latest of hour; on the last stroke of midnight. The night could never be so late that belief could no longer dawn.

Seeing his face made her flare in surprise—he was there, in her life! If she took her eyes away, only for a second, she feared she would forget and he would vanish, like a dream in waking mist. And yet there he was; reading in her armchair. He was huddled close to the window, in the half-light of her closed curtains. He was reading her draft! The draft of _The Fairy Ring_ , the book he had been the muse of. He made words flow in her mind like enchanted weirs.

Jorah—he was there. Here. Now. He rested his temple on a finger; just under the arm of his glasses. She followed their frame: he had pushed them down his nose so he only had to lower his eyes to read, and could keep his neck straight. He kept teasing his lips open, his middle and fourth finger nestling close together, both almost-kissed each time he twiddled them on his mouth. And then his last fingers, his thumb, rested upon his jaw; against his gruff.

And she fell in love with him.

His other hand kept her notebook open, his grip firm on the binding, yet not bending it—at a perfect angle. His thumb moved over the paper, smoothing it, caressing it as he read. She saw when he noticed her sitting up in bed from the corner of his eyes: he moved his head just a bit, his eyes watching her, his lips travelling along his finger as he moved his head, blinking his eyes at the beginning and end of this voyage, his stare above his glasses. He smiled softly at her, and moved his head back to the notebook, resuming the tiny caresses on his lips as he read on.

And she fell in love with him.

He moved his eyes back to her, from behind his book, when he sensed she was still looking at him; and he smiled, more, his eyes crinkling. The cheek she could see best was dimpling. In the shadows of morning, his gruff was a dark copper shade—a first blush still cloaked in the blanket of night. And in the crack of dawn, his hand was white and bright, and the cheek offered to her sight still in shadows: a delicate powder of light underlined his cheekbone.

And she fell in love with him.

She felt like begging that he would bequeath these hands and lips to her body, that he would douse and kindle her both. There was a stray curl behind his neck, kissing the gruff that was kissing his throat; and more swirls of gold breaking away from under his yellow shirt. How his chest swelled as he breathed! It was so broad, so very imposing—and if she looked up, his eyes! There were dips of shadows underneath them; and the lines at their very corner, she could lose herself in them. So could she disappear on the fresh scar on his neck; oh this was her fault, her own fault… And his hands! The moons of his nails she could only guess at, from this distance; but she could marvel at the way his hand closed—to think his hand folded like this, following these lines! It awed her, suddenly, to think of it, that every time his hand closed—on her, on her book, on the rope of a sledge—, they would follow these lines, exactly these lines; that these lines were him.

And she fell in love with him.

She felt wonder, amazement, admiration—he was remarkable, beautiful, the most formidable person in reality and beyond. She felt as if, somehow, she experienced the vision of him for the first time—for every line of his face was loved by her, and yet every new sunray, every new shadow, every smile or frown, made her discover them anew. She watched him on, enthralled. How mysterious he was still, to her. She would look at him, distending a second to centuries, a wink of his a whole voyage, an exhale an epic poem, and she would best time at its own game. He wasn’t a character, of that she was now sure; he was not; he was alive, he was himself, he was not of her. But each moment he gave her was a story, the story of their love; and as soon as it was lived, there it lived forevermore: a saga, a poem, a novel, a fairy tale. He was all, all genres at once; he was in all her stories; he was all her stories; because he was in all her life. She was astonished by her own thoughts, and by him most of all; how strange it was to feel such things; to think as she, she as she had been meant to be, to feel so loved for who she was. She had felt beautiful before, but not by being herself. And now—now she felt beautiful when she looked upon Jorah’s face. Now she felt she could see all of him, too, that she knew him inside-out; she wanted her soul to stretch for him as her folds did for his cock; and to hold him, in an embrace that was equally unbreakable and the softest of soft.

And she fell in love with him.

She wanted to watch those curls as they’d turn silver, then pure snow white. She wanted to witness that spot on his head growing, and soothe his frown as he’d fret over it in their mirror. She wanted him to believe her when she told him how she saw him—she wanted him to see himself in the mirror she held for him, always, so he could so how beautiful and radiant and golden he was to her, always, all of him. She wanted her soul to dance with him on high bouts of magic, to dive with him down the depths of words. She wanted, she wanted to see the crinkles and lines on his face tell more and more tales of everything he had felt; she wanted to keep seeing it all on his face.

Jorah caught her eyes and opened his a bit wider, asking her—what? What is it? And in this second, she fell in love with him. All over again.

She smiled, tearing up, saying “I love you,” without words, her eyes speaking for her; and then she did, say it, say it with her heart, her lips, say it in her voice so it could nestle in his ear and thud there to his heart, to his soul, so it would be seared into his beliefs forever and ever and ever.

A sunbeam fell on his face, lighting him up as he smiled at her. He snuggled lazily onto the back of his chair, relaxed in her love, his heart and soul laid bare for her to take.

She got up from the bed, walking under his eyes watching her smugly. She was dressed in the sunrays that kept inviting themselves to her flat; one by one they knocked at the window up on the very last floor, under the roof from whence Knights ran to climb down to their Queens.

And she did take him.

She took his lips. And she took his cheeks, every scruff of his beard, and his nose, and his ears; and she kissed his curls, she kissed his neck. She couldn’t dip him in the river Styx, but she could kiss him everywhere, to tell time and Death: this man is mine. Back off, stay still, fear me. You will not touch him. I’ll squeeze so much time out of the time we have we’ll get to eternity!

And if I fail—if at long last I fail—there won’t be a nook of him I will not have loved. There won’t be one tiny piece of him I won’t be able to save into art until I can soar again, with him, he and I united in eternal flight!

“Jorah?” she said.

“Yes, my love,” he sighed through her kisses, rolling himself under her like a mythical beast, his eyes half-closed, his hands open, all of him lounging on the armchair, tame and wild and her gift from life, “Do you know the best thing about you?”

He growled under her hands, “It’s that I love you, Daenerys—loving you makes me the best Knight,” “and loving you makes me the best Queen,” Daenerys answered.

“But the best thing about you, is that as time passes, I love you more and more profoundly and intimately and yet… I fall in love with you anew all the time. With you, I have eternal wonder. And that’s how I know—you and I, we will live happily ever after.”

And Jorah smiled; for the sun was shining, and she was there to hear.

*

Once upon a time, when they who dream no longer did, two dreamers dreamed that they would live an everlasting dream. They dreamed they would swell time—and, dear heart, live they did; for all conjurers live, before they fasten their eyes to sleep.

Say, were they the last ones with hearts full of wonder?

Or can you see, through time, the spoors that cannot be washed away? 

Can you see their love in the sparkles of Winter’s snow? Can you smell it in cloves, when they pierce an orange’s heart and carry thoughts of home to you?

Fear not the stories flying in the dark; they light the dawn. Can you see it in the night—that shadow gathering your wish on the North Star, leaping to the moon, before floating down, a balcony shy of Earth?

Say, have Winter faded in endless not-quite Spring?

Are dreams gone for the sand of the world?

This is the day of dreams; do you see the sun rising? Do not seek it east, in the sky of our world; look for it west, down inside your chest. This spark means they love; they love ever and ever after through time.

Wish, dearest heart! Wish hard enough to shatter the mist hiding your dreams from view.

And say—

Do you believe?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Abrupt production, within the amorous field, of a counter-image of the loved object. According to minor incidents or tenuous features, the subject suddenly sees the good Image alter and capsize. (...) In the other's perfect and 'embalmed' figure (for that is the degree to which it fascinates me) I perceive suddenly a speck of corruption." Roland Barthes (1915-1980), A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, semiotician and more and he's still a major figure in semiotics and literature discourse. For example, the "death of the author" was theorized by Barthes.  
> "We lived together, the two of us (etc.)" Jacques Prévert (1900-1977), The Dead Leaves  
> "that it could only be the second turning point in a storyline, when all is lost" Jorah is here using Story Structure 101 to convince his aunt. Antagonists (the principal opponent of the hero) and guardians (the teacher or helper of the hero) are also archetypal figures in most plots.  
> "At the last, tenderly (etc.)" Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass (The Last Invocation)  
> "The Fairy Ring" The title of Daenerys' fairytales is borrowed from Florence Harrison's _In the Fairy Ring_.  
> "She couldn’t dip him in the river Styx" Daenerys is thinking of the warrior Achilles in Greek mythology. Achilles' mother, the nymph Thetis, dipped him into the river Styx when he was a baby so he would be unvulnerable. But ultimately, Achilles died young as was prophetised, for he was shot in the heel where Thetis had held him.
> 
> ***
> 
> Thank you for reading! 💖


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